The seat of empire [microform]

WHITE BEAR LAKE.

f
_ nhl?
THE [A?

SEAT OF EMPIRE.

BY

CHARLES CARLETON COFFIN,

‘¢ CARLETON.”

“IT now believe that the ultimate last seat of government on this great continent
will be found somewhere within a circle or radius not very far from the spot on
which I stand, at the head of navigation on the Mississippi River.”

j W. H. SEWARD, Speech at St. Paul, 1860.

BOSTON:
FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.
1870.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by
CHARLES CARLETON COFFIN,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

University Press: Wetcn, BicEtow, & Co.,
CAMBRIDGE.

TO

JOHN GREGORY SMITH,

°
GOVERNOR OF VERMONT DURING THE REBELLION,

WHOM I FIRST SAW TENDERLY CARING FOR THE SICK AND
WOUNDED IN THE HOSPITALS OF FREDERICKSBURG, AND
THROUGH WHOSE ENERGY AND PERSEVERANCE
ONE OF THE GREATEST ENTERPRISES OF
THE PRESENT CENTURY HAS BEEN
SUCCESSFULLY INAUGURATED,

This Volume

IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

FROM CHICAGO TO MINNEAPOLIS.
PaGE

Cutting loose from Care. — Map of the Northwest. — Leaving
Chicago. — Fourth of July. — At La Crosse. — Dance on a
Steamboat.— Up the Mississippi.— The Boundaries of Min-
nesota. — Winona. — St. Paul.— Minneapolis. — The Father
of Waters in Harness . ° ° ‘ , ‘ .

CHAPTER II.
ST. CLOUD AND BEYOND.

St. Cloud. — Our Party. — First Night in Camp. — A Midnight
Thunder-Storm. — Sunday in Camp. — Up the Sauk Valley. —
White Bear Lake. — Catching a Turtle. — Lightning Lake. —
Second Sabbath in Camp. — The River Systems of the North-
west. — Elevations across the Continent. — The Future . . 25

CHAPTER III.

THE RED RIVER COUNTRY.

Down the Vallev.of the Red River. — Breckenridge. — Fort Ab-
ercrombie. — Climate. —- Winters at Winnipeg. — Burlington,
— The Emigrant. — Father Genin. — Mackenzie. — Harman.—
Sir John Richardson. — Captain Palliser. — Father De Smet.
— Winters on the Saskatchawan.—Snow-Fall . . . 51

vi CONTENTS.

CHAPTER [V.
THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST.

Winnipeggers. — Ride over the Prairie. — Dakota City. —
Georgetown. — Hudson Bay Company Teams. — Parting with
our Friends.—-The 48d Parallel. — Dakota. — Wyoming. —
Montana. — Idaho. — Oregon. — Washington. — British Co-
lumbia. — Distances. — Fisheries of the Pacific. — Mr. Sew-
ard'sSpeech . «6 «© «© © «© © «© «© «

»

CHAPTER V.
THE FRONTIER.

Bottineau. — The Leaf Hills. — A Ride over the Plain. — The
Park Region. — Settlers. — How they kept the Fourth of July.
— Chippewa Indians. — Rush Lake. — A Serenade on the
Prairie. — German Pioneers. — Otter-Tail Lake . . . 109

CHAPTER VI.
ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE.

Noon Lunch. — Toasting Pork.— A Montana Dutchman. —
Emigrant Trains. — Camping at Night. — Wheat of Min-,
nesota. — The State in 1849.— A Word to Young Men. —
Boys once more. — Our Last Camp-Fire a area |

CHAPTER VII.
IN THE FOREST.

Down-Easters. — The Eden of Lumbermen. — Country East of
the Mississippi. — The Climate of the Forest Region. — White
Bear Lake. — Travellers from Duluth. — A Maine Farmer in
Minnesota. — Chengwatona. — Pitching of the Mud-Wagon.
Grindstone. — Kettle River. —Superior. . «© «. « 187

CONTENTS. Vii

CHAPTER VIII.
DULUTH.

Duluth.— Minnesota Point. —The Projected Breakwater. —
Comparison with the Suez Canal. — The Town. — Period of
Navigation. — The Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad.
Transportation. — Elevators. — St. Louis River. — Minnesota
Slate Quarry.— An Indian Chief and his Followers. — Rail-
road Lands. — Manufacturing Industry. — Terms of the Rail-
road Company. a sis . . . 154

CHAPTER IX.

THE MINING REGION.

The Apostle Islands. — Bayfield. — The Harbor.— Breakfast
with Captains Vaughn. — Ashland. — Big Trout. — Onto-
nagon.— Approach to Marquette.— The Harbor. — The
Town. — Discovery of Iron Ore. — Mining Companies. —Va-
rieties of Ore. — The Miners. — The Coming Years . . 169

CHAPTER X.

A FAMILIAR TALK.

A Talk about the Northwest. — Mr. Blotter.— He wants a Farm.
— Government Lands.— Homestead Law of Minnesota. —
Exemption Laws.— The St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. —
Liberal Terms of Payment. — Stock-Raising. — Robbing
Mother Earth. — Native Grasses. — Fruit. — Small Grains. —
Productions of the State, 1869.— Schools. — When to Emi-
grate. — Prospective Development. — The Tide of Emigra-
tion . . . ° ° ° e ‘ ° . ° - 186

CHAPTER XI.

NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD.

How Communities grow. — Humboldt. — What I saw in 1846.
— The Pacific Coast. — River-Systems. — Lewis and Clark.

vu CONTENTS.

— Jeff Davis. — Charter of the Company. — The Projectors.
— The Line.—From Lake Superior to the Mississippi.—
To the Rocky Mountains. — Deer Lodge Pass. — The West-
ern Slope. — Mr. Roberts’s Report. — Snow Blockades. — Ele-
vations. — Power of Locomotives. — Bureau of Emigration.
— Portable Houses. — Help to Emigrants. — The Future . 207

THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

ey

CHAPTER I.
FROM CHICAGO TO MINNEAPOLIS.

AST summer I cut loose from all care, and
enjoyed a few weeks of freedom and recrea-
tion with a party of gentlemen on the frontier
between Lake Superior and the Missouri River.
I was charmed by the beauty of the country,
amazed at its resources, and favorably impressed
by its probable future. Its attractions were set
forth in a series of letters contributed to the Bos-
ton Journal.

People from every Eastern State, as well as from
New York and the British Provinces, have called
upon me since my return, for the purpose of “hav-
ing a talk about the Northwest,” while others have
applied by letter for additional or specific infor-
mation, and others still have requested a repub-
lication of the letters. In response to these calls
this small volume has been prepared, setting forth
the physical features of the vast reach of country

lying between the Lakes and the Pacific, not only
l A

2 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

in the United States, but in British America as
well.

The most trustworthy accounts of persons who
have lived there, as well as of engineers who have
been sent out by the United States, British, and
Canadian governments, have been collated, that
those seeking a home in Minnesota or Dakota
may know what sort of a country les beyond,
and what will be its probable future.

The map accompanying the volume has been
prepared for the most part by the Bureau of the
United States Topographical Engineers. It gives
me pleasure to acknowledge my indebtedness to
Major-General Humphreys, in charge of the Bu-
reau, and to Colonel Woodruffe, in charge of the
map department, for permission to use the same.

Through their courtesy I am enabled to place
before the public the most complete map ever
published of the country between the 36th and
55th parallel, extending across the continent, and
showing not only the entire railway system of the
Eastern and Middle States, but also the Union
Pacific Railroad and the Northern Pacific, now
under construction. The figures followed by the
letter T have reference to the elevation of the
locality above tide-water, thus enabling the reader
to obtain at a glance a comprehensive idea of the
topographical as well as the geographical features
of the country.

FROM CHICAGO TO MINNEAPOLIS. 3

« All aboard for the Northwest !”

So shouted the stalwart porter of the Sherman
House, Chicago, on the morning of the 5th of
July, 1869.

Giving heed to the call, we descended the steps
of the hotel and entered an omnibus waiting at
the door, that quickly whirled us to the depot of
the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad.

There were avout a dozen gentlemen in the
party, all bound for the Northwest, to explore a
portion of the vast reach of country lying between
Lake Superior and the great northern bend of the
Missouri River.

It was a pleasant, sunny, joyful morning. The
anniversary of the nation’s independence having
fallen on the Sabbath, the celebration was observed
on Monday, and the streets resounded with the
explosion of fire-crackers. Americans, Germans,
Norwegians, Irish, people of all nationalities, were
celebrating the birthday of their adopted country.
Not only in Chicago, but throughout the cosmo-
politan State of Wisconsin, as we sped over its
fertile prairies and through its towns and villages
during the day, there was a repetition of the
scene,

Settlers from New England and the Middle
States were having Sabbath-School, temperance, or
civic celebrations ; Irish societies were marching in
procession, bearing green banners emblazoned with

4 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

the shamrock, thistle, and harp of Erin; Ger-
mans were drinking lager beer, singing songs, and
smoking their meerschaums. All work was laid
aside, and all hands—farmers with their wives
and daughters, young men with their sweethearts,
children in crowds — were observing in their va-
rious ways the return of the holiday.

Our route was by way of La Crosse, which we
reached late in the evening. We were to go up
the Mississippi on a steamer that lay moored to the
bank. Its cabin was aglow with lights. Enter-
ing it, we found a party of ladies and gentlemen
formed for a quadrille. They were the officers of
the boat and their friends from the town. A negro
with a bass-viol, and two Germans with violins,
were tuning their instruments and rosining their
bows.

We were met upon the threshold by a rosy-
cheeked damsel, who gleefully exclaimed, —

“©, yeau have arrived at the right moment! We
are having a right good time, and we only want one
more gentleman to make it go real good. Yeau’ll
dance neaw, won’t ye? I wanta partner. O, ye
will neaw. I know ye will, and yell call off the
changes tew, won't ye? Neaw dew.”

Not having a “light fantastic toe” on either
foot, we were forced to say no to this lively
La Crosse maiden ; besides, we were tired and cov-
ered with dust, and in sad plight for the ball-room.

FROM CHICAGO TO MINNEAPOLIS. 5)
A member of Congress was next appealed to, then
a grave and dignified Doctor of Divinity.

A more ungallant party than ours never stood
on a Western steamboat. Governor, judge, parson,
members of Congress, all shook their heads and .
resisted the enthusiastic lady. In vain she urged
them, and the poor girl, with downcast counte-
nace, turned from the obdurate Yankees, and
sailed in gloriously with a youth who fortunately
entered tlie cabin at the moment.

It was a rare sight to see, for they danced with
a will, They made the steamer shake from stem
to stern. The glass lamps tinkled in their brass
settings, and the doors of staterooms rattled on
their hinges, especially when the largest gentle-
mai of the party came to a shuffle.

He is the Daniel Lambert of the Mississippi, —
immense and gigantic, and having great develop-
ment round the equator.

Quadrille, cotillon, and waltz, and genuine west-
ern break-downs followed one after the other.
There was plenty to eat and drink in the pantry.
The first thing we heard in the evening was the
tuning of the instruments; the last thing, as we
dropped off to sleep, was the scraping of the vio-
lins and the shuffling of feet.

We are awake in the morning in season to take
a look at the place before the boat casts off from
its mooring for a trip to Winona.

6 -. THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

A company of Norwegian emigrants that came
with us on the train from Chicago are cooking
their breakfast in and around the station. They
sailed from Christiania for Quebec, and have been
six weeks on the way. All ages are represented.
It is a party made up of families. There are
many light-haired maidens among them with deep
blue eyes and blonde complexions ; and robust
young men with honest faces, who have bidden
farewell forever to their old homes upon the fiords
of Norway, and who henceforth are to be citizens
of the United States.

They will find immediate employment on the
railroads of Minnesota, in the construction of new
lines. They are not hired by the day, but small
sections are let out to individuals, who receive
a specified sum for every square yard of earth
thrown up.

There is no discussion of the eight-hour ques-
tion among them. They work sixteen hours of
their own accord, instead of haggling over eight.
They have no time to engage in rows, nor do they
find occasion. They have had a bare existence
in their old home; life there was ever a strug-
gle, the mere keeping together of soul and body,
but here Hope leads them on. They are poor
now, but a few years hence they will be well off.
in the world. They will have farms, nice houses,
money in banks, government bonds, and railway

FROM CHICAGO TO MINNEAPOLIS. 7

stocks. They will obtain land at government price,
will raise wheat, wool, or stock, and will soon find
their land quadrupled in value. They will make
excellent citizens. Their hearts are on the right
side, — not physiologically, but morally, politi-
cally, and religiously speaking. They are ardent
lovers of liberty; they cannot be trammelled by
any shackles, political or ecclesiastical. They are
frugal, industrious, and honest. Already there
are several daily papers published in the Scandi-
navian language.

The steamer is ploughing the Mississippi
against the current northward. Wisconsin is on
our right, Minnesota om our left ; and while we are
moving on toward the region of country which we
are to visit, we may while away the time by
thinking over the general characteristics of the
State of Minnesota, in which our explorations are
to commence.

The southern boundary strikes the river twenty-
two miles below La Crosse. If I were to go down
there and turn my steps due west, I might walk
twe hundred and sixty-four miles along the Iowa
line before reaching the southwestern corner of
the State. The western side is the longest, and
if I were to start from the southwestern corner
and travel due north, I should have a journey
of three hundred and sixty miles to accom-
plish before reaching the northern boundary, —

8 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

the line between the United States and British
America.

Starting from Pembina, at the northwest corner
of the State, on the Red River of the North, and
travelling due east eighty miles, I should reach
the Lake of the Woods; sailing across it sixty
miles, then entering the river leading to Rainy
Lake, I might pass through the wonderful water-
way of lakes and rivers reaching to Lake Supe-
rior, —a distance of about four hundred miles.

The eastern boundary formed by the Mississippi,
St. Croix, and Lake Superior is more irregular.
Its general outline, as we look at it upon the map,
is that of a crescent, cutting into Minnesota, the
horns turned eastward. The area within the boun-
daries thus described is estimated at 84,000 square
miles, or 54,760,000 acres. It is a territory larger
than Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachu-
setts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined.

Here, upon the Mississippi, I gaze upon bluffs
of gray limestone wrought into fantastic shape by
the winds and storms of centuries and by the
slow wearing of the river; but were I to climb
them, and gain the general level of the country, [
should behold rolling prairies dotted with lakes
and ponds of pure water, and groves of oak and
hickory. All of Minnesota east of the Mississippi
is a timbered region. Here and there are open-
ings; but, speaking in general terms, the entire

FROM CHICAGO TO MINNEAPOLIS. 9
: .
country east of the river is a forest, which through
‘the coming years will resound with the axe of
the lumberman.

When we go up the Mississippi eighty miles
above St. Paul to St. Cloud, we shall find the Sauk
River coming in from the west ; and there the Mis-
sissippi is no longer the boundary of the timbered
lands, but the forest reaches across the stream
westward to Otter-Tail River, a distance of more
than one hundred miles. The Sauk River is its
southern boundary.

All the region north of the Sauk, at the head-
waters of the Mississippi and north of Lake Supe-
rior, is well supplied with timber. A belt of woods
forty miles wide, starting from the Crow-Wing
River, extends south nearly to the Lowa boundary.
It is broken here and there by prairie openings
and fertile meadows. The tract is known through-
out the Northwest as the region of the “Big
Woods.”

There are fringes of timber along the streams,
so that the settler, wherever he may wish to make
a home, will generally find material for building
purposes within easy reach. In this respect Min-
nesota is one of the most favored States of the
Union.

The formations of the bluffs now and then re-
mind us of old castles upon the Rhine. They

are, upon an average, three hundred and fifty feet
1*

10 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

above the summer level of the river. We are far
from the Gulf of Mexico, yet the river at St. Paul
is only six hundred and seventy-six feet above tide-
water.

Northward of Minneapolis the bluffs disappear,
and the surface of the river is but a few feet below
the general level of the country, which is about.
one thousand feet above the sea. |

It is one of the remarkable topographical fea-
tures of the continent, that from St. Paul to the
Peace River, which empties into the Athabasca,
the elevation is about the same, though the dis-
tance is more than one thousand miles. Through-
out this great extent of territory, especially in Min-
nesota, are innumerable lakes and ponds of pure
fresh water, some of them having no visible outlet
or inlet, with pebbly shores and beaches of white
sand, bordered by groves and parks of oak, ash,
and maple, lending an indescribable charm to the
beauty of the landscape.

While we are making these observations the
steamer is nearing Winona, a pleasant town, de-
lightfully situated on a low prairie, elevated but a
few feet above the river. The bluffs at this point
recede, giving ample room for a town site with a
ravine behind it.

Nature has done a great deal for the place, —
scooping out the ravine as if the sole purpose had
been to make the construction of a railroad an

FROM CHICAGO TO MINNEAPOLIS. 11

easy matter. The Winona and St. Peter’s Railway
strikes out from the town over the prairie, winds
through the ravine, and by easy grades gains the
rolling country beyond. The road is nearly com-
pleted to the Minnesota River, one hundred and
forty miles. It will eventually be extended to the
western boundary of the State, and onward into
Dakota. It is now owned by the Chicago and
Northwestern Railway Company, and runs through
the centre of the second tier of counties in the
State. The Southern Minnesota Railroad starts
from La Crosse, and runs west through the first
tier of counties. It is already constructed half-
way across the State, and will be pushed on, as
civilization advances, to the Missouri. That is the
objective point of all the lines of railway leading
west from the Mississippi, and they will soon be
there.

This city of Winona fifteen years ago had about
one hnndred inhabitants. It was a place where
steamers stopped to take wood and discharge a
few packages of freight, but to-day it has a popu-
lation of nine thousand. Looking out upon it from
the promenade deck of the steamer, we see new
buildings going up, and can hear the hammers and
saws of the carpenters. It already contains thir-
teen churches and a Normal School with three
hundred scholars, who are preparing to teach the
children of the State, though the probabilities are

12 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

that most of them will soon teach their own off-
spring instead of their neighbors’; for in the West
young men are plenty, maidens scarce. Out
here —
‘* There is no goose so gray but soon or late
Will find some honest gander for her mate.”

Not so in the East, for the young men there are
pushing west, and women are in the majority. It
is a certainty that some of them will know more
of single blessedness than of married life. If they
would only come out here, the certainty would be
the other way.

Not stopping at Winona, but hastening on board
the train, we fly over the prairie, up the ravine,
and out through one of the most fertile sections
of the great grain-field of the Northwest.

The superintendent of the road, Mr. Stewart,
accompanies our party, and we receive pleasure
and profit by having a gentleman with us who is
so thoroughly informed as he to point out the ob-
jects of interest along the way. By a winding road,
now running under a high bluff where the lime-
stone ledges overhang the track, now gliding over
a high trestle-bridge from the northern to the
southern side of the deep ravine, we gain at length
the general table-land, and behold, reaching as far
as the eye can see, fields of wheat. Fences are
visible here and there, showing the division of
farms; but there is scarcely a break in the sea of

FROM CHICAGO TO MINNEAPOLIS. 13

grain, in flower now, rippling and waving in the
passing breeze. Farm-houses dot the landscape,
and white cottages are embowered in surrounding
groves, and here and there we detect a small
patch of corn or an acre of potatoes, — small isl-
ands these in the great ocean of wheat reaching
westward, northward, and southward.

We are astonished when the train nears St.
Charles, a town of two thousand inhabitants, look-
ing marvellously like a New England village, to
see a school-house just completed at a cost of
$15,000! and still wider open we our eyes at
Rochester, with a population of six thousand, where
we behold a school-building that has cost $60,000!
Upon inquiry we ascertain that the bulk of the
population of these towns is from New England.

A ride of about ninety miles brings us to Owa-
tona, a town of about three thousand inhabitants.

We are in’Steele County. The little rivulets
here meandering through the prairie and flowing
southward reach the Mississippi only after crossing
the State of Iowa, while those running northward
join the Mississippi through the Minnesota River.

Here, as at Rochester, we behold charming land-
scapes, immense fields of grain, groves of trees,
snug cottages and farm-houses, and 4 thrifty town.
Owatona has a school-house that cost the citizens
$ 20,000; yet nine years ago the population of
the entire county was only 2,862! The census of

14 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

1870 will probably make it 15,000. So civiliza-
tion advances, not only here, but all through the
Northwest, especially where there are railroad fa-
cilities.

From Owatona we turn north and pass through
Rice County, containing eighteen townships. It is
one of the best-timbered counties west of the Mis-
sissippi; there are large tracts of oak, maple, but-
ternut, walnut, poplar, elm, and boxwood. We
glide through belts of timber where choppers are
felling the trees for railroad ties, past fields where
the industrious husbandman has turned the natu-
ral grasses of the prairie into blooming clover.

At Faribault a company of Norwegians, recently
arrived from their homes beyond the sea, and not
having reached their journey’s end, are cooking
their supper near the station. To-morrow they
will be pushing on westward to the grounds al-
ready purchased by the agent who has brought
them out. !

In 1850 this entire county had only one hundred
inhabitants ; the census of next year will probably
show a population of twenty-five thousand, — one
half Americans, one sixth Germans, one ninth
Irish, besides Norwegians, Swedes, ind Canadians.
Faribault has about four thousand inhabitants,
who have laid excellent foundations for future
growth. They have an Episcopal College, a High
School for ladies, a Theological Seminary, a Deaf

FROM CHICAGO TO MINNEAPOLIS. 15

and Dumb Asylum, two Congregational churches,
also one Baptist, one Methodist, and one Episco-
pal. They have excellent water-power on the
Cannon River. Five flouring-mills have already
been erected.

Fourteen miles beyond this place we find North-
field with three thousand inhabitants, three fourths
of them New-Englanders. Five churches and a
college, two flouring-mills capable of turning out
one hundred thousand barrels per annum, excellent
schools, a go-ahead population, are the characteris-
tics of this thoroughly wide-awake town.

A mile or two beyond Northfield we enter Da-
kota County,—one of the most fertile in the
State. It was one of the first settled, aiu:d in 1860
contained 9,058 inhabitants. Its present popula-
tion is estimated at 20,000,—one third of them
Irish, one third Americans, one quarter Germans,
and the remainder of all nationalities. The lar-
gest town is Hastings, on the Mississippi, contain-
ing about four thousand inhabitants. The Has-
tings and Dakota Railroad, extending west, crosses
the Milwaukie and St. Paul at Farmington, a
pleasant little town located on a green and fertile
prairie. Thirty miles of this Hastings and Dakota
road are in operation, and it is pushing on west-
ward, like all the others, to reach the territory of
Dakota and the Missouri River.

On over the prairies we fly, reaching the oldest

16 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

town in the State, Mendota, which was a trading-
post of the American Fur Company as long ago as
1828. It was livelier then than now, for in those
years Indians by the thousand made it their ren-
dezvous, coming in their bark canoes down the
Minnesota from the borders of Dakota, down the
St. Croix, which joins the Mississippi opposite
Hastings, down the Mississippi from all the region
above the Falls of St. Anthony; but now it is a
seedy place. The houses have a forlorn look, and
the three hundred Irish and Germans that make
up the bulk of the population are not of the class
that lay the foundations of empires, or make the
wilderness bud and blossom with roses ; they take
life easy, and let to-day wait on to-morrow.

Fort Snelling, admirably located, looms grand-
ly above the high steep bluff of the northern
bank of the Minnesota River. It was one of the
strongest posts on the frontier, but it is as useless
now as a last year’s swallow’s-nest. The frontier
is three hundred miles farther on.

Upon the early maps of Minnesota I find a mag-
nificent city occupying the surrounding ground.
It was surveyed and plotted, but St. Paul and
Minneapolis got ahead, and the city of Snelling
has no place in history.

We approach St. Paul from the south. Stepping
from the cars we find ourselves on the lowlands of
the Mississippi, with a high bluff south of us, and

FROM CHICAGO TO MINNEAPOLIS. 17

g..0' rer on the north bank, both rising perpendicu-
larly from the river. We ride over a long wooden
bridge, one end of which rests on the low land by
the railroad station, and the other on the high
northern bluff, so that the structure is inclined at
an angle of about twenty degrees, like the drive-
way to a New England barn where the floor is
nearly up to the high beams. We are in a city
which in 1849, twenty years ago, had a population
of eight hundred and forty, but which now has
an estimated population of twenty-five thousand.
Here that powerful tribe of Northern Indians, the
Dakotas, had their capital,—a cave in the sand-
stone bluffs, which was the council-chamber of the
tribe. Upon the bluff now stands the capital of
the State, and the sanguine citizens believe that
the city is to be the commercial metropolis of the
Northwest. A few months ago I was on the other
side of the globe, where civilization is at a stand-
still; where communities exist, but scarcely change;
where decay is quite as probable as growth ; where
advancement is the exception, and not the rule. To
ride through the streets of St. Paul; to behold its
spacious warehouses, its elegant edifices, stores
piled with the goods of all lands, the products of
all climes, — furs from Hudson Bay, oranges from
Messina, teas from China, coffee from Brazil, silks
from Paris, and all the products of industry from

our own land; to behold the streets alive. with
; B

18_—=s«yj. THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

people, crowded with farmers’ wagons laden with
wheat and flour; to read the signs, “ Young Men’s
Christian Association,’ “St. Paul Library Associa-
tion” ; to see elegant school-edifices and churches,
beautiful private residences surrounded by lawns
and adorned with works of art,—to see this in
contrast with what we have so lately witnessed,
and to think that this is the development of
American civilization, going on now as never
before, and destined to continue till all this wide
region is to be thus dotted over with centres of ©
influence and power, sends an indescribable thrill
through our veins. It is not merely that we are
Americans, but because in this land Christian civi-
lization is attaining the highest development of all
time. The people of St. Paul may justly take
pride in what they have already accomplished, and
they also have reason to look forward with confi-
dence to the future.

The county is quite small, containing only four
and a half townships. The soil is poor, a sandy
loam, of not much account for farming purposes,
but being at the head of steamboat navigation a
good start was obtained ; and now that railroads
are superseding steamboats, St. Paul reaches out
her iron arms in every direction, — up the Missis-
sippi to St. Cloud, westward through Minneapolis
to the Red River of the North, southwest to touch
the Missouri at Sioux City, due south over the line

FROM CHICAGO TO MINNEAPOLIS, 19

by which we reached the city, down the river to-
wards Chicago, and northeast to Lake Superior.
As a spider extends its threads, so St. Paul, or per-
‘haps, more properly speaking, St. Paul and Minne-
apolis together, are throwing out their lines of
communication, making themselves the centre of
the great Northwest systems of railways. The in-
terests of St. Paul are mercantile, those of Minne-
apolis manufacturing. They are nearly five hun-
dred miles distant from Chicago, — far enough to
be an independent commercial, manufacturing, aad
distributing centre. That such is to be their des-
tiny cannot be doubted.

The outfit of our party had been prepared at
Minneapolis; and a large number of gentlemen
from that city made their appearance at St. Paul,
to convey us to the town in their own private
carriages.

It is a charming ride that we have along the
eastern bank of the Mississippi, which pours its
mighty flood,— mighty even here, though so far
away from the sea,—rolling and thundering far
below us in the chasm which it has worn in the
solid rock.

On our right hand are fields of waving grain, and
white cottages half hidden in groves of oak and
maple. We see New England thrift and enter-
prise, for the six States east of the Hudson have
been sending their wide-awake sons and daughters

20 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

to this section for the last twenty years. The gen-
tleman with whom we are riding came here from
the woods of Maine, a lumberman from the Penob-
scot, and has been the architect of his own for-
tune. He knows all about the Upper Mississippi,
its tributaries, and the chain of lakes lying north-_
,west of Lake Superior. He is Mayor of Minne-
apolis, a substantial citizen, his hand ready for every
good work,—for the building of schools and
churches, for charity and benevolence ; but on the
Upper Mississippi he wears a red shirt, eats pork
and beans, and sleeps on pine boughs. He directs
the labor of hundreds of wood-choppers and rafts-
men.

How different this from what we see in other
lands! I find my pen runs on contrasts. How
can one help it after seeing that gorgeous and
lumbering old carriage in which the Lord Mayor
of London rides from Guildhall to Westminster ?
The Lord Mayor himself appears in a scarlet
cloak not half so becoming as a red shirt. He
wears a massive gold chain, and a hat which would
be most in place on the stage of a theatre, and
which would make him a guy in any American
town. Not so do the Lord Mayors of the North-
west appear in public. They understand practical
life. It is one of the characteristics of our demo-
cratic government that it makes people practical
in all things.

FROM CHICAGO TO MINNEAPOLIS. 21

In 1865 the town of Minneapolis contained
only 4,607 inhabitants, but the population by the
census of the present year is 13,080.

The fall in the river at this point is sixty-four
feet, furnishing 120,000 horse-power, — more than
sufficient to drive every mill-wheel and factory in
New England, and, according to Wheelock’s Report,
greater than the whole motive-power — steam and
water — employed in textile manufactures in Eng-
landin 1850, Thirteen flouring-mills, fourteen saw-
mills, two woollen-mills, and two paper-mills, are
already erected. Six million dollars have been in-
vested in manufacturing at this point. The only
difficulty to be encountered is the preservation of
the falls in their present position. Beneath the
slate rock over which the torrent pours is a strata
of soft sandstone, which rapidly wears away.
Measures have been taken, however, to preserve
the cataract in its present condition, by construct-
ing an apron to carry the water some distance
beyond the verge of the fall and thus prevent the
breaking away of the rock.

No one can behold the natural advantages at
Minneapolis without coming to the conclusion that
it is to be one of the great manufacturing cities of
the world if the fall can be kept in its present
position. Cotton can be loaded upon steamers
at Memphis, and discharged at St. Paul. The cli-

mate here is exceedingly favorable for the manu-

22 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

facturing of cotton goods. The lumber-mills by
and by will give place to other manufactures, and
Minneapolis will rank with Lowell or Fall River.

Our ride brings us to St. Anthony on the east
bank of the river, where we behold the Mississippi
roaring and tumbling over the slate-stone ledges,
and hear the buzzing and humming of the ma-
chinery in the saw-mills.

St. Anthony was one of the earliest- settled
towns in the State. Its projectors were Southern
men. Streets were laid out, stores erected, a great
hotel built, and extravagant prices asked for land,
but the owners of Minneapolis offered lots at
cheaper rates, and found purchasers. The war
came on, and the proprietors of St. Anthony being
largely from the South, the place ceased to grow,
while its rival on the western shore moved steadily
onward in a prosperous career. But St.. Anthony
is again advancing, for many gentlemen doing
business in Minneapolis reside there. The inter-
ests of the two places are identical, and will ad-
vance together.

How can one describe what is indescribable ?
I can only speak of this city as situated on a
beautiful plain, with the Mississippi thundering
over a cataract with a power sufficient to build up
half a dozen Lowells ; with a country behind it
where every acre of land as far as the eye can see,
and a hundred or a thousand times farther, is capa-

FROM CHICAGO TO MINNEAPOLIS. 23

ble of cultivation and of supporting a population as
dense as that of Belgium or China. Wide streets,
costly school-houses, church spires, a commu-
nity in which the New England element largely
predominates, —a city where every other door
does not open to a lager-beer saloon, as in some
Western towns; where the sound of the saw and
the hammer, and the click of the mason’s trowel
and sledge, are heard from morning till night ;
where the streets are filled with wagons from the
country, bringing in grain and carrying back lum-
ber, with the farmer, his wife and buxom daughter,
and tow-headed, bright-faced little boys perched
on top—such are the characteristics of Minne-
apolis.

There was a time when Pegasus was put in har-
ness, and the ancients, according to fable, tried to
put Hercules to work. If those days of classic story
have gone by, better ones have come, for the peo-
ple of Minneapolis have got the Father of Waters
in harness. He is cutting out one hundred million
feet of lumber per annum here. I can hear him
spinning his saws. He is turning a score of mill-
stones, and setting a million or two of spindles in
motion, and pretty soon some of the citizens in-
tend to set him to weaving bags and cloth by the
hundred thousand yards! Only a tithe of his
strength is yet laid out. These men, reared in
the East, and developed in the West, will make

24 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

the old Father work for them henceforth. He will
not be allowed to idle away his time by leaping
and laughing year in and year out over vonder
cataract. He must work for the good of the
human race. They will use him for the building
of a great mart of industry, — for the erection of
houses and homes, the abodes of comfort and
happiness and of joyful and peaceful life.

ST. CLOUD AND BEYOND, 25

CHAPTER II.
ST. CLOUD AND BEYOND.

T. CLOUD was the rendezvous of the party,
where a grand ovation awaited us, —a band

of music at the station, a dinner at the hotel, a
ride to Sauk Rapids, two miles above the town.

St. Cloud is eighty miles above St. Paul, situated
on the west bank of the river, and is reached by
the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. The goods of
the Hudson Bay Company pass through the town.
Three hundred tons per annum are shipped from
Liverpool to Montreal, from Montreal to Milwau-
kie, from Milwaukie by rail to this point, and
from hence are transported by oxen to the Red
River, taken down that stream on a small steamer
to Lake Winnipeg, then sent in boats and canoes
p the Assinniboin, the Saskatchawan, and to all
he numerous trading-posts between Winnipeg and
he Arctic Ocean.

We are getting towards the frontier. We come
pon frontiersmen in leggings, slouch hat, and fur
oat, — carrying their rifles. Indians are riding
heir ponies. Wigwams are seen in the groves.
arts are here from Pembina and Fort Garry after
upplies.

26 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

And yet, in the suburbs of the town we see a
large Normal School building just completed. A
magnificent bridge costing $40,000 spans the Mis-
sissippi. At Sauk Rapids the river rolls over a
granite ledge, and a chartered water-power com-
pany is erecting a dam, constructing a canal, and
laying the foundations for the second great maun-
ufacturing city upon the Mississippi.

This section has been a favorite locality for
German emigrants. Nearly one half of the inhab-
itants of Stearns County, of which St. Cloud is the
county-seat, are Germans. Here we bid good by
to the locomotive and take the saddle instead, with —
light carriages for occasional change.

We leave hotels behind, and are to enjoy the
pleasures of camp-life.

Our party as made up consists of the following

persons : —
Gov. J. Gregory Smit, St. Albans, Vt.
W. C. Smita, M. C. & é

W. H. Lorp, D. D., Montpelier, Vt.
F, E. Woopsriper, Vergennes, Vt.
S. W. Tuayer, M. D., Burlington, Vt.
Hon. R. D. Rice, Augusta, Me.

P. Copurn, is %

E. F. Jonnson, Middletown, Conn,

C. C. Corein, Boston.

P. W. Hotmes, New York City.

A. B. Bayurss, Jr., New York City.
W. R. Marsnat, St. Paul, Gov. of Minnesota,
E. M. Witsoy, M. C., Minneapolis.
G. A. Brackert, a

ST. CLOUD AND BEYOND. 27

The list is headed by Ex-Governor Smith, Presi-
dent of the Northern Pacific Railroad and of the
Vermont Central. It fell to his lot to be Chief
Magistrate of the Green Mountain State during
the rebellion, and among all the loyal governors
there was no one that excelled him in energy and
executive force. He was here, there, and every-
where,— one day in Vermont, the next in Wash-
ington, the third in the rear of the army looking
after the wounded. I remember seeing him at
Fredericksburg during those terrible weeks that
followed the struggles at the Wilderness and
Spottsylvania, — directing his assistants, laboring
with his own hands, — hunting up the sick and
wounded, giving up his own cot, sleeping on the
bare floor, or not sleeping at all,— cheering the
despondent, writing sympathetic letters to fathers
and mothers whose sons were in the hospital, or
who had given their lives to their country. He
has taken hold of this great er.terprise — the con-
struction of a railroad across the continent from
the Lakes to the Pacific Ocean— with lke zeal
and energy, and has organized this expedition to
explore the country between Lake Superior and
the Missouri River. 3

Judge Rice is from Maine. He is President of
the Portland and Kennebec Railroad, and a director
of the Northern Pacific. ‘defore engaging in the
management of railroads he held, for sixteen years,

28 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

the honorable and responsible position of Associate
Judge of the Supreme Court of Maine. Well
versed in law, and holding the scales of justice
evenly, his decisions have been regarded as wise
and just.

Mr. Johnson is the Chief Engineer of the road,
one of the ablest iu his profession in the couniry.
As long ago as 1853, before the government sur-
veys were made, he published a pamphlet upon
this future highway to the Pacific, in which he
diszussed with great ability the physical geogra-
phy of the country, not only from Lake Superior
to Puget Sound, but the entire region between the
Mississippi and the Pacific. The explorations that
have since been made correspond almost exactly
with his statements.

The President of the company has showed fore-
-thought for the health, comfort, and pleasure of the
party, by taking along two of the most genial men
in New England, — Dr. Thayer, of. Burlington, to
cure us of all the ills that flesh is heir to, whose
broad smiling face is itself a most excellent medi-
cine, whose stories are quite as good as his pills
and powders for keeping our digestion all right;
and Rey. Dr. Loru, zom Montpelier, for many years
pastor of one of the largest churches in the State.

With a doctor to keep our bodies right, with a
minister to point out the narrow way that leads to
a brighter world, and both of them as warm-

ST, CLOUD AND BEYOND. 29

hearted and genial as sunshine, we surely ought to
be in good health.

Mr. Holmes, of New York, is an old campaigner.
He had experienced the rough and tumble of life
on the Upper Missouri, with his rifle for a com-
panion, the earth his bed, the broad expanse of sky
his tent. :

Governor Marshall, Chief Magistrate of Minne-
sota, Mr. Wilson, member of Congress from the
same State, and Mr. Brackett, of Minneapolis,
were in Sibley’s expedition against the Indians, and
are accustomed to all the pleasures and hardships
of a campaign. They are to explore the region
lying between the Red River of the North and
the Great Bend of the Missouri. Mr. Bayless,
of New York, accompanies the party to enjoy the
freedom and excitement of frontier life. Nor are
we without other company. Some of the clergy-
men of Minnesota, like their brethren in other
parts of the country, turn their backs on civiliza-
tion during the sumier months, and spend a few
weeks with Nature for a teacher. It is related
that the Rev. Dr. Bethune made it a point to visit
Moosehead Lake in Maine every season, to medi-
tate in solitude and eat onions! He not only
loved them, but had great faith in their strength-
ening po rs. His ministry was a perpetual Lent
so far as « «ions were concerned, and it was only
when he broke away from society and was lost ‘to

30 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

the world in the forest that he could partake freely
of his favorite vegetable.

Travelling the same road, and keeping us com-
pany, are Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Fuller, of Rochester,
and Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Williams, and Mr. and
Miss Wheaton, of Northfield, Minn. They have a
prairie wagon with a covered top, drawn by two
horses, in which is packed a tent, with pots,
kettles, pans, dishes, flour, pork, beans, canned
fruit, hams, butter, bed and bedding. They have
saddle-horses for excursions, and carry rifles, shot-
guns, and fishing-tackle. Pulpit, people and par-
sonage, hoop-skirts, stove-pipe hats, work and
care, are left behind. ‘The women can handle the
fishing-rod or rifle. It may seem to ladies unac-
customed to country life as a great letting down
of dignity on the part of these women of the
West to enter upon such an expedition, but they
- are in search of health. They are not aiming
to be Amazons. A few weeks upon thé prairies,
and they will return well browned, but healthful
and rugged, and as attractive and charming as the
fair Maud who raked hay aud dreamed of what
might have been.

Our first night is spent at “Camp Thunder,”
and why it is so named will presently be appar-
ent. It is nearly night when we leave St. Cloud
for a four-mile ride to our quarters.

We can see in the rays of the setting sun, as

ST. CLOUD AND BEYOND. 31

we ride over the prairie, our village of white tents
pitched by the roadside, and our wagons parked
near by. It is an exhilarating scene, bringing
to remembrance the many tented fields during the
war, and those soul-stirring days when the armies
of the Republic marched under their great leader
to victory.

The sun goes down through a_ blood-colored
haze, throwing its departing beams upon a bank
of leaden clouds that lie along the horizon. Old
salts say that such sunsets in the tropics are fol-
lowed by storms.

Through the evening, while sitting in the doors
of our tents and talking of camp-life and its pleas-
ant experiences, we can see faint flashes of light-
ning along the horizon. The leaden clouds grow
darker, and rise slowly up the sky. Through the
deepening haze we catch faint glimpses of celestial
architecture, — castles, towers, massive walls, and

‘** Looming bastions fringed with fire.”

Far away rolls the heavy thunder, — so far that
it seems the diapason of a distant organ. We lose
sight of the gorgeous palaces, temples, and cathe-
drals of the upper air, or we see them only when
the bright flashes of lightning illume the sky.

It is past midnight,—we have been asleep,
and are wakened by the sudden bursting of the
storm. The canvas roof and walls of our house
flap suddenly in the wind. The cords are drawn

32 _ THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

taut against the tent-pins. The roof rises, set-
tles, surges up and down, to and fro, the walls
belly in and then out against the swaying frame.
The rain comes in great drops, in small drops, in
drifting spray, rattling upon the canvas like a
hundred thousand muskets, —just as they rattled
and rolled on that awful day at the Wilderness
when the two greatest armies ever gathered on this
continent met in deadly conflict.

All the while the tent is as bright with light-
ning as with the sun at noonday. By the side of
my cot is a beok which I have been reading; tak-
ing it in my hand, I read the finest print, noted the
hour, minute, and position of the second-hand upon
my ‘watch.

Looking out through the opening of the fly, I
behold the distant woodland, the fences, the beard-
ed grain laid prostrate by the blast, the rain-drops
falling aslant through the air, the farm-house a
half-mile distant, — all revealed by the red glare
of the lightning. All the landscape is revealed.
For an instant I am in darkness, then all appears
again beneath the lurid light.

The storm grows wilder. The gale becomes a
tempest, and increases to a tornado. The thunder
crashes around, above, so near that the crackling
follows in an instant the blinding flash. It rat-
tles, rolls, roars, and explodes like bursting bombs.

The tent is reeling. Knowing what will be the

IN THE STORM.

8T. CLOUD AND BEYOND. 33

result, I hurry on my clothing, and have just time
to seize an india-rubber coat before the pins are
pulled from the gr6und. I spring to the pole, de-
termined to hold on to the last.

Though the lightning is so fearful, and the mo-
ment well calculated to arouse solemn thoughts,
we cannot restrain our laughter when two occu-
pants of an adjoining tent rush into mine in the
condition of men who have had a sousing in a
pond. The wind pulled their tent up by the
roots, and slapped the wet canvas down upon them
in a twinkling. They crawled out like muskrats
from their holes, —their night-shirts fit for mops,
their clothing ready for washing, their boots full
of water, their hats limp and damp and ready for
moulding into corrugated tiles.

It is a ludicrous scene. I am the central figure
inside the tent, — holding to the pole with all my
might, bareheaded, barefooted, my body at an
angle of forty-five degrees, my feet sinking into
the black mire,—the dripping canvas swinging
and swaying, now lifted by the wind and now
flapping in my face, and drenching anew two
members of Congress, who sit upon my broken-
down bed, shivering while wringing out their
shirts ! ‘

When the fury of the storm is over, I rush out
to drive down the pins, and find that my tent is the

only one in the encampment that is not wholly
2° c

34 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

prostrated. The members of the party are stand-
ing like shirted ghosts in the storm. The rotund
form of our M. D. is wrapped in the oil-cloth
table-cover. For the moment he is a hydropath,
and complacently surveys the wreck of tents. The
rain falls on his bare head, the water streams from
his gray locks, and runs like a river down his
broad back; but he does not bow before the blast,
he breasts it bravely. I do not hear him, but I
can see by his features that he is silently singing
the Sunday-school song, —
**T ll stand the storm,
It won’t be long.”

Tents, beds, bedding, clothing, all are soppy
and moppy, and the ground a quagmire. We
go ankle deep into the mud. We might navigate
the prairies in a boat.

Our purveyor, Mr. Brackett, an old campaigner,
knows just what to do to make us comfortable.
He has a dry tent in one of the wagons, which,
when the rain has ceased, is quickly set up. His
cook soon has his coffee-pot bubbling, and with
hot coffee and a roaring fire we are none the worse
for the drenching.

The storm has spent its fury, and is passing
away, but the heavens are all aglow. Broad
flashes sweep across the sky, flame up to the ze-
nith, or quiver along the horizon. Bolt after bolt
falls earthward, or flies from the north, south, east,

ST. CLOUD AND BEYOND. 35

and west,— from all points of the compass, —
branching into beautiful forms, spreading out into
threads and fibres of light, each tipped with golden
balls or beads of brightest hue, seen a moment,
then gone forever.

Flash and flame, bolt and bar, bead, ball, and
line, follow each other in quick succession, or all
appear at once in indescribable beauty and fear-
ful grandeur. We can only gaze in wonder and
admiration, though all but blinded by the vivid
flashes, and though each bolt may be a messenger
of death, — though in the twinkling of an eye the
spirit may be stricken from its present tabernacle
and sent upon its returnless flight. The display,
so magnificent and grand, has its only counterpart
in the picture which imagination paints of Sinai
or the final judgment.

In an adjoining county the storm was attended
by a whirlwind. Houses were demolished and
several persons killed. It was terrifying to be in
it, to hear the deafening thunder; but it was a sight
worth seeing, —that glorious lighting up of the
arch of heaven.

It required half a day of bright sunshine to put
things in trim after the tornado, and then on Sat-
urday afternoon the party pushed on to Cold
Spring and encamped on the bank of Sauk River
for the Sabbath.

The camp was named “ Jay Cooke,” in honor of

36 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

the energetic banker who is the financial agent of
the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. Sweet,
calm, and peaceful the hours. Religious services
were held, conducted by Rev. Dr. Lord, who had
a flour-barrel and a candle-box before him for a
pulpit ; a congregation of teamsters, with people
from the little village near by, and the gentlemen
composing our party, some of us seated on boxes,
but most of us sitting upon the ground. Nor were
we without a choir. Everybody sung Old Hun-
dred ; and though some of us could only sound
one note, and that straight along from beginning
to end, like the drone of a bagpipe, it went glo-
riously. Old Hundred never was sung with better
spirit, though there was room for improvement of
the understanding, especially in the base. The
teamsters, after service, hunted turtle-eggs on the
bank of the river, and*one of them brought in a
hatful, which were cooked for supper.

Our course from Cold Spring was up the Sauk
Valley to Sauk Centre, a lively town with an excel-
lent water-power. The town is about six years old,
but its population already numbers fifteen hundred.
The country around it is one of the most beautiful
and fertile in.aginable. The Sauk River is the
southern boundary of the timbered lands west of the |
Mississippi. As we look southward, over the mag-
nificent expanse, we see farm-houses and grain-
fields, but on the north bank are dense forests.

‘

et
a

5.

yp Tye

| Ml

| i} i

CAMP JAY COOKE.

ST. CLOUD AND BEYOND. 37

The prairie lands are already taken up by settlers,
while there are many thousand acres of the wood-
ed portion of Stearns County yet in the posses-
sion of the government. The emigrant can raise
a crop of wheat the second year after beginning a
farm upon the prairies, while if he goes into the
woods there is the slow process of clearing and
digging out of stumps, and a great deal of hard
labor before he has any returns. Those prairie
lands that lie in the immediate vicinity of tim-
ber are most valuable. The valley of the Sauk,
besides being exceedingly fertile, has timber near
at hand, and has had a rapid development. It is
an inviting section for the capitalist, trader, me-
chanic, or farmer, and its growth promises to be as
rapid in the future as it has been since 1865.

A two days’ ride over a magnificent prairie
brings us to White Bear Lake. If we had trav-
elled due west from St. Cloud, along the township
lines, sixty miles, we should have found ourselves
at its southern shore instead of its northern. Our
camp for the night was pitched on the hills over-
woking this sheet of water. The Vale of Tempe
could not have been fairer, and Arcadia had no
lovelier scene, than that which we gazed. upon
from the green slope around our tents, blooming
with wild roses, lilies, petunias, and phlox.

The lake stretches southward a distance of
twelve miles, indented here and there by a wooded

38 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

promontory, with sandy beaches sweeping in mag-
nificent curves, with a patch of woodland on the
eastern shore, and a green fringe of stately oaks
and elms around its entire circumference. As far
as the vision extends we behold limitless fields,
whose verdure changes in varying hues with every
passing cloud, and wanting only a background of
highlands to make it as lovely as Windermere, the
most enchanting of all the lakes of Old England.

At our feet was the little town of Glenwood.
We looked down upon a hotel with the stars and
stripes waving above it ; upon a neat school-house
with children playing around its doors ; upon a
cluster of twenty or thirty white houses sur-
rounded by gardens and flower-beds. Three yeas
ago this was a solitude.

There is a sail-boat upon the lake, which some
gentlemen of our party chartered for a fishing-ex-
cursion. Thinking perhaps we should get more
fish by dividing our force, I took a skiff, and ob-
tained a stalwart Norwegian to row it. Almost as
soon as my hook touched the water I felt a tug at
the other end of the line, and in came a pickerel,
—a three-pounder! The Norwegian rowed slowly
along the head of the lake, and one big fellow after
another was pulled into the boat. There was
scarcely a breath of wind, and the sails were idly
flapping against the masts of the larger boat, where
my friends were whiling away the time as best

ST. CLOUD AND BEYOND. 39

they could, tantalized by seeing that I was having
all the fun. They could only crack their rifles at
a loon, or at the flocks of ducks swimming along
the shore.

But there was rare sport at hand. I discovered
an enormous turtle lying upon the surface of the ©
water as if asleep. “ Approach gently,” I said to
the Norwegian. He dipped his oars softly, and
sent the skiff stern foremost towards the turtle,
who was puffing and blowing like a wheezy old
gentleman sound asleep.

One more push of the oar and he will be mine.
Too late! We have lost him. Down he goes. I
can see him four feet beneath us, clawing off. No,
he is coming up. He rises to the surface. I grasp
his tail with both hands, and jerk with all my
might. The boat dips, but a backward spring
saves it from going over, and his majesty of White
Bear Lake, the oldest inhabitant of its silver wa-
ters, weighing forty-six pounds, —so venerable that
he wears a garden-bed of grass and weeds upon
his back —is floundering in the half-filled skiff.

The boatman springs to his feet, stands on the
seat with uplifted oar, undecided whether to jump
overboard or to fight the monster who is making
at his legs with open jaws.

By an adroit movement of an oar I whirl him
upon his back, and hold him down while the Nor-
Wwegian paddles slowly to the beach.

40 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

The captive rides in a meal-bag the remainder
of the day, hissing now and then, and striving to
regain his liberty.

Ah! isn’t that a delicious supper which we sit
down to out wpon the prairies on the shores of ’
Lightning Lake, — beyond the borders of civiliza-
tion! It is not mock turtle, but the genuine arti-
cle, such as‘aldermen eat. True, we have tin cups
and plates, and other primitive table furniture, but
hunger sharpens the appetite, and food is as tooth-
some as if served on gold-bordered china. Be-
sides turtle-soup we have fresh fish and boiled
duck. Who is there that would not like to find
such fare inside the borders of civilization ?

Beyond Pope we entered Grant County, contain-
ing 268,000 acres of land, nearly all open to set-
tlement, and through which the rain line of the
St. Paul and Pacific Railroad will be constructed
the present year. The population of the entire
county probably does not exceed five hundred,
who are mostly Swedes and Norwegians. It is on
the ridge, or, rather, the gentle undulating prairie,
between the waters of the Red River of the
North and the Chippewa River, an affluent of the
Minnesota. We passed between two small lakes ;
the waters of one find their way to the Gulf of
Mexico, the other to the Arctic Sea.

Our second Sabbath camp was upon the bank of
the Red River of the North,—a beautiful stream,

ST. CLOUD AND BEYOND. 41

winding its peaceful way through a country as
fertile as the Delta of the Nile.

For two days we had journeyed over rolling prai-
rie, seeing no inhabitant; but on Saturday after-
noon we reached the great thoroughfare leading
from the Mississippi to the Red River, — travelled
by the Fort Abercrombie stage, and by the Pem-
bina and Fort Garry carts, by government trains
and the ox-teams that transport the supplies of the
Hudson Bay Company.

Sitting there upon the bank of the’ Red River
amid the tall, rank grasses, and watching the flow-
ing stream, my thoughts went with its tide towards
the Northern Sea. It has its rise a hundred miles
or more north of us, near Lake Itasca, the source
of the Mississippi, flows southward to this point,
turns westward here, is joined below by a stream
issuing from Lake Traverse, its most southern
source, and then flows due north to Lake Winni-
peg, a distance altogether of about five hundred
miles. ;

It is the great southern artery of a water-sys-
tem that lies almost wholly beyond the jurisdic-
tion of the United States.

Zhe Assinniboine joins it just before reaching
Lake Winnipeg, and up that stream we may
steam due west two hundred and thirty miles to
Fort Ellis. From Winnipeg we may pass eastward
to the intricate Rainy Lake system towards Supe-

49 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

rior, or westward into Lakes Manitoba and Winni-
pegosis, which together contain as much water as
Lake Erie. .

Sailing along the western shore of Lake Winni-
peg two hundred miles, we reach the mouth of the
Saskatchawan, large enough to be classed as one
of the great rivers of the continent.

Professor Hind, of Toronto, who conducted a
government exploring-party through the country
northwest of Lake Superior, says: “The Saskatch-
awan, Which gathers the waters from a country
greater in extent than the vast region drained by
the St. Lawrence and all its tributaries, from Lake
Superior to the Gulf, is navigable for more than a
thousand miles of its course, with the single ex-
ception of a few rapids near its confluence with
Lake Winnipeg.”

Professor Hind travelled from Fort Garry north-
west over the prairies towards the Rocky Moun-
tains, and gives the following description of his
first view of the stream. He says :—

“The first view, six hundred miles from the
lake, filled me with astonishment and admiration,
—nearly half a mile broad, flowing with a swift
current, and still I was three hundred and fifty
miles from the mountains.”

The small steamer now plying on the Red River
might, during the season of high water, make its
way from Fort Abercrombie down this river, then

ST. CLOUD AND BEYOND. 43

through Lake Winnipeg, and up the Saskatchawan
westward to the base of the Rocky Mountains, —
a distance altogether of sixteen hundred miles.

We are in the latitude of the continental water-
system. If we travel along the parallel eastward,
one hundred miles will bring us to the Mississippi
at Crow Wing, another hundred will take us to
Lake Superior, where we may embark on a propel-
ler of five hundred tons and make our way down
through the lakes and the St. Lawrence to Liver-
pool, or any other foreign port; or travelling west
three hundred miles will bring us to the Missouri,
where we may take one of the steamers plying on
that stream and go up to Fort Benton under the
shadow of the Rocky Mountains.

Two hundred and fifty miles farther by land,
through the mining region of Montana, will bring
us to the navigable waters of the Columbia, down
which we may glide to the Pacific.

Nowhere in the Eastern hemisphere is there such
a succession of lakes and navigable rivers, and no
other country exhibits such an area of arable land
so intersected by fresh-water streams.

It would be an easy matter by canals to connect
the Red River, the Saskatchawan, and Lake Win-
nipeg with the Mississippi. We can take a canoe
from this point and paddle up to Otter-Tail Lake,
and there, by carrying it a mile or so over a
sand-ridge, launch it on Leaf River, an affluent of

44 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

the Crow-Wing, and so reach the Father of Waters.
We may do even better than that. Instead of
paddling up stream we may float down with the
current a few miles to the outlet of Lake Traverse,
row across the lake, and from that into Big Stone
Lake, which is the source of the Minnesota River,
and by this route reach the Mississippi below
Minneapolis. Boats carrying two tons have fre-
quently passed from one river to the other during
the season of high water. It would not be diffi-
cult to construct a canal by which steamers might
pass from the Mississippi to the base of the Rocky
Mountains in British Columbia. Railroads are
superseding canals, and it is not likely that any
such improvement of the water-way will be at-
tempted during the present generation. :

But a glance at the river and lake systems en-
ables us to obtain a view of the physical features
of the country. We see that the northwestern
portion of the continent is an extended plain.
The Red River here by our encampment is about
nine hundred and sixty feet above the sea. If we
were to float down to Lake Winnipeg, we should
find that sheet of water three hundred feet lower,

Our camp is pitched to-day about ten miles west
of the 96th meridian. If we were to travel south
from this point 350 miles, we should reach Omaha,
which is 946 feet above the sea, so that if we were
sitting on the bank of the Missouri at that point,

ST. CLOUD AND BEYOND. 45

we should be just about as high above tide-water
as we are while lolling here in the tall rank grass.
By going from Omaha to San Francisco over the
Pacific Railroad, we see the elevations of the coun-
try; then by striking westward from this point to
the head-waters of the Missouri, and then down
the Columbia, we shall see at once the physical
features of the two sections, The engineers of the
Pacific Railroad, after gaining the top of the bluff
behind Omaha, have a long and apparently level
sweep before them. Yet there is a gradually as-
cending grade. Four hundred and eighty-five miles
west of Omaha we come to the 104th meridian, at
an elevation of 4,861 feet. If we go west from
this point to that meridian, we shall strike it at
the mouth of the Yellowstone, 1,970 feet above
tide-water. Near the 105th meridian is the high-
est point on the Union Pacific, at Sherman, which
is 8,235 feet above the sea. Three hundred miles
beyond Sherman, at Green River, is the lowest
point between Omaha and the descent into Salt
Lake Valley, 6,112 feet above the ocean level. At
that point we are about twenty-six miles west of
the 110th meridian. Now going northward to the
valley of the Missouri once more, we find that Fort
Benton is about the same number of miles west
of the same meridian, but the fort is only 2,747
feet above the sea.

Just beyond Fort Benton we come to the Rocky

b]

46 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

Mountains,—-the only range to be crossed between
Lake Superior and the Columbia. We enter the
Deer Lodge Pass near the 112th meridian, where
our barometer will show us that we are about five
thousand feet above the sea. We find that the
miners at work on the western slope have cut a
canal through the pass, and have turned the waters
of the Missouri into the Columbia. The pass is
so level that the traveller can hardly tell when
he has reached the dividing line.

Going south now along the meridian, we shall
find that between Green River and Salt Lake lies
the Wasatch Range, which the Union Pacific eross-
es at an elevation of 7,463 feet at Aspen Station,
940 miles west of Omaha. From that point the
line descends to Salt Lake, which is 4,220 feet
above the sea. Westward of this, on the 115th
meridian, 1,240 miles from Omaha, we reach the
top of Humboldt Mountains, 6,169 feet above tide-
water, while the elevation is only 1,500 feet on the
same meridian in the valley of the Columbia.

At Humboldt Lake, 1,493 miles west of Omaha,
the rails are at the lowest level of the mountain
region, 4,047 feet above the sea. This is a little
west of the 119th meridian, about the same longi-
tude as Walla Walla on the great plain of the Co-
lumbia, which is less than 400 feet above the sea.

Westward of Humboldt Lake the Central Line
rises to the summit of the Sierra Nevadas, crossing

ST. CLOUD AND BEYOND. 47

them 7,042 feet above the sea, then descending at
the rate of 116 feet to the mile into the valley of
the Sacramento.

Now going back to the plains, to the town of
Sidney, which is 410 miles west of Omaha, we find
the altitude there the same as at Humboldt Lake.
This level does not show itself again till we are
well down on the western slope of the Sierra Ne-
vada Range. The entire country between Omaha
and Sacramento, with the exception of about 510
miles, is above the level of 4,000 feet, while on the
line westward from the point where I am indul-
ging in this topographical revery there are not
thirty miles reaching that altitude.

With this glance at the configuration of the con-
tinent I might make an isometric map in the sand
with my fingers, heaping it up to represent the
Black Hills at Sherman, a lower ridge to indicate
the Wasatch Range, a depression to show the Salt
Lake Valley, and then another high ridge to repre-
sent the Sierra Nevadas. I might trace the chan-
nel of the Missouri and the Columbia, and show
that most of this territory is a great plain sloping
northward, — that it is lower at Winnipeg than it
is here, as low here as it is at Omaha.

Taking this glance at the physical features of
the northern and central portions of the continent,
I can see that nature has adapted all this vast
area drained by the Missouri and Yellowstone and

De
co

‘U0SIIQ ‘puryjiog pur IATY poy

84} W99A49q VUT] IOAMO0] ony pue ‘oyuaurelorg pue eYyLeUCQ W99M49q SUOT}LAITA oY} SyUsseider ou, 1oddu oy,

‘AUINNOO AHL AO NOLLVUNDIANOD

“vas ou} JO [2Ao']

THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

5 sedaaaseiocouybennnes iin steieidassraseseosetedeivites - Sacramento and Portland.

ssovnnasvone Sierra Nevada, 7,042 feet.

eawesesecscassscentetsncncncssseseecenscsccco=:

Frwnnnnnens Humboldt Lake, 4,047 feet.

wwavewerme FTumboldt Mountains, 6,169 feet.

so sbio—fftvatenoiateinsisie ice ~ Clark’s River, 3, 700 feet.
Lessssscoeensecneenssee ~ Salt Lake, 4,220 feet.

we essssestannnn ~ Deer Lodge Pass, 5,000 feet.
wwe Wasatch Range, 7,463 feet.

verffoowmnns Kort Benton, 2,747 feet.
wwe Green River, 6,112 feet.

-- Sherman, 8,235 feet.
Rirvariinawastis 104th Meridian, 4,861 feet.

Liwinimnmnnvumomvnne Otaha and Red River, 946 feet.

ST. CLOUD AND BEYOND. 49

their tributaries, by the Mississippi, by the Red
River, the Assinniboine, the Saskatchawan, and
the Columbia, to be the abode, in the future, of
uncounted millions of the human race.

It is a solitude now, but the vanguard of the
approaching multitude is near at hand. The
farmer who lives up the stream and tends the ferry
where we crossed yesterday has one neighbor with-
in twelve miles; but a twelvemonth hence these
acres will have many farm-houses. To-day we
have listened to a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Lord,
who preached beneath a canvas roof. We were
called together by the blowing of a tin trumpet,
but a year hence the sweet and solemn tones of
church-bells will in all probability echo over these
verdant meadows.

The locomotive — that great civilizer of this
century — will be here before the flowers bloom in
the spring of 1871. It will bring towns, villages,
churches, school-houses, printing-presses, and mil-
lions of free people. I sit as inadream. I can
hear, in imagination, the voices of the advancing
multitude, — of light-hearted maidens and sober
matrons, of bright-eyed boys and strong-armed
men. The wild roses are blooming here to-day,
the sod is as yet unturned, and the lilies of the
field hold up their cups to catch the falling dew ;
but another year will bring the beginning of the

change. Civilization, which has crossed the Mis-
3 D

50 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

sissippi, will soon flow down this stream, and sweep
on to the valley of the Upper Missouri.

Think of it, young men of the East, you who
are measuring off tape for young ladies through
the long and wearisome hours, barely earning your
living! Throw down the yardstick and come out
here if you would be men. Let the fresh breeze
fan your brow, take hold of the plough, bend down
fora few years to hard work with determination
to win nobility, and success will attend your efforts,
Is this too enthusiastic? Will those who read it
say, “He has lost his head and gone daft out
there on the prairies”? Not quite. I am an ob-
server here, as I have been in other lands. I have
ridden many times over the great States of the
Northwest ; have seen the riches of Santa Clara
and Napa west of the Sierra Nevadas ; have looked
out over the meadows of the Yangtse and _ the
Nile, and can say, with honest conviction, that |
have seen nowhere so inviting a field as that of
Minnesota, none with greater undeveloped wealth,
or with such prospect of quick development.

THE RED RIVER COUNTRY. 51

CHAPTER IIIf.
THE RED RIVER COUNTRY.

ONDAY morning saw us on our way north-
ward, — down the valley of the Red River.
It was exhilarating to gallop over the level
prairies, inhaling the fresh air, our horses brush-
ing the dew from the grass, and to see flocks of
plump prairie chickens rise in the air and whirr
away, — to mark where they settled, and then to
start them again and bring them down, one by one,
with a double-barrelled shot-gun. Did we not think
of the stews and roasts we would have at night ?
For a dozen years or more every school-boy has
seen upon his map the town of Breckenbridge,
located on the Red River of the North. It is off
from the travelled road. The town, as one of our
teamsters informed us, “has gone up.” It origi-
nally consisted of two houses and a saw-mill,
but the Sioux Indians swooped down upon it in
1862, and burned the whole place. A few logs,
the charred remains of timbers, and vail fire-weeds
alone mark the spot.
Riding on, we reached Fort Abercrombie at noon.
It is situated in Dakota, on the west bank of the
Red River, which we crossed by a rope ferry. It

2 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

is a resting-place for the thousands of teams pass.
ing between St. Cloud and Fort Garry, and other
places in the far Northwest. The place is of no
particular account except as a distributing point
for government supplies for forts farther on, and
the advancement of civilization will soon enable the
War Department to break up the establishment.

The river is fringed with timber. We ride
beneath stately oaks growing upon the bottom.
lands, and notice upon the trees the high-water
marks of former years. The stream is very wint-
ing, and when the spring rains come on the rise is
as great, though not usually so rapid, as in the
Merrimac and Connecticut, and other rivers of
the East.

The valley of the Red River is not such as we
are accustomed to see in the East, bounded by
hills or mountains, but a level plain.

When the sky is clear and the air serene, we
can catch far away in the east the faint outline
of the Leaf Hills, composing the low ridge between
the Red River and the Mississippi, but westward
there is nothing to bound the sight. The dead
level reaches on and on to the rolling prairies of
the Upper Missouri.

The eye rests only upon the magnificent carpet,
bright with wild roses and petunias, lilies and
harebells, which Nature has unrolled upon the
floor of this gorgeous palace.

THE RED RIVER COUNTRY. | 53

I had been slow to believe all that had been told

in regard to the genial climate of the Northwest,

but through the courtesy of the commandant of the

Fort, General Hunt, was permitted to see the me-
teorological records kept at the post.

The summer of 1868 was excessively warm in
the Western, Middle, and Atlantic States. Here,
on one day in July, the mercury rose to ninety
degrees, Fahrenheit, but the mean temperature
for the month was seventy-nine. In August the
highest temperature was eighty-eight, the lowest
fifty, the mean sixty-nine. In September the
highest temperature was seventy-four, the mean
forty-seven. A slight frost occurred on the night
of the 16th, and a hard one on the last day of
the month. In October a few flakes of snow
fellon the 27th. In November there were a few
inches of snow. Toward the close of December,
on one day, the mercury reached twenty-seven
below zero. On the 30th of January it dropped
to thirty below. During this month there were
four days on which snow fell, and in February
there were ten snowy days. The greatest depth of
snow during the winter was about eighteen inches,
furnishing uninterrupted sleighing from December
to March.

On the 23d of March wild geese and ducks ap-
peared, winging their way to Lake Winnipeg and
Hudson Bay. The spring opened early in April.

54 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

There are no farms as yet in the valley, — the
few settlers cultivating only small patches ot land.

I have thought of this section of country as being
almost up to the arctic circle, and can only disabuse
my mind by comparing it with other localities in
the same latitude. St. Paul is in the latitude of
Bordeaux, in the grape-growing district of South-
ern France. Here at Fort Abercrombie we are at
least one hundred and fifty miles farther south
than the world’s gayest capital, Paris.

It is not likely that Northern Minnesota will
ever become a wine-producing country, though wild
grapes are found along the streams, and the people
of St. Paul and Minneapolis will show us thrifty
vines in their gardens, laden with heavy clusters.

Minnesota is a wheat-crowing region, climate
and soil are alike favorable to its production.

On the east bank of the Red River we see a
field owned by Mr. McAuley, who keeps a store
and sells boots, pipes, tobacco, powder, shot, and
all kinds of supplies needed by hunters and fron-
tiersmen. He sowed his wheat this year (1869)
on the 5th, of May, and it is now, on the 19th of
July, heading out. “I had forty-five bushels to
the acre last year,” he says, “and the present crop
will be equally good.”

This Red River Valley throughout its length
and breadth is very fertile. Here are twenty thow
sand square miles of land,— an area as large &

THE RED RIVER COUNTRY. 55

Vermont and New Hampshire combined, — unsur-
passed for richness.

The construction of the Northern Pacific Rail-

road and the St. Paul and Pacific, both of which
are to reach this valley within a few months, will
make these lands virtually as near market as the
farms of Central or Western Ilhnois. From the
ted River to Duluth the distance is 210 miles in
a direct line. It is 187 miles from Chicago to
Springfield, Illinois; so that when the Northern
Pacific Railroad is constructed to this point, Mr.
McAuley will be just as near Bostou or New York
as the farmers who live in the vicinity of the capi-
tal of Illinois ; for grain can be taken from Duluth
to Buffalo, Oswego, or Ogdensburg as cheaply as
from Chicago. The richness of the lands, the sup-
ply of timber on the Ited River and all its branch-
es, with the opening of the two lines of railway,
will give a rapid settlement to this paradise of the
Northwest.

Professor Hind, of Toronto, who was sent out by
the Canadian government to explore the British
Possessions northwest of Lake Superior, in his re-
port says: “Of the valley of the Red River I find
it impossible to speak in any other terms than
those which may express astonishment and admi-
ration. I entirely concur in the brief but expres-
sive description given me by an English settler on
the Assinniboine, that the vailey of the Red River,

56 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

including a large portion belonging to its great af-
fluents, is a paradise of fertility.”

In Mr. McAuley’s garden we see corn in the
spindle. The broad leaves wear as rich a green as
if fertilized with the best Peruvian guano ; and no
wonder, for the soil is a deep black loam, and as
mellow as an ash-heap. His peas were sown the
2d of June, and they are already large enough
for the table! He will have an abundant supply
of cucumbers by the first of August. They were
not started under glass, but the dry seeds were
dropped.in the hills the same day he planted his
peas, — the 2d of June.

Vegetation advances with great rapidity. Mr.
McAuley says that vegetables and grains come
to maturity ten or fifteen days earlier here than at
Manchester, New Hampshire, where he once re-
sided.

General Pope was formerly stationed at Fort
Abercrombie; and in his report upon the resources
of the country and its climatology, says that the
wheat, upon an average, is five pounds per bushel
heavier than that grown in Illinois or the Middle
States.

We saw yesterday a gentleman and lady who
live at Fort Garry, and who call themselves “ Win-
nipeggers.” They were born in Scotland, and had
been home to Old Scotia to see their friends.

“How do you like Winnipeg?” I asked.

THE RED RIVER, COUNTRY, 57

“There is no finer country in the world,” he
replied.

“Do you not have cold winters ?”

“Not remarkably so. We have a few cold days,
but the air is usually clear and still on such days,
and we do not mind the cold. If we only had a
railroad, it would be the finest place in the world
to live in.”

We wonder at his enthusiasm over a country
which we have thought of as being almost, if not
quite, out of the world, while he doubtless looks
with pity upon us who are content to remain in
such a cooped-up place as the East.

Most of us, unless we have become nomads,
think that there are no garden patches so attrac-
tive as our own, and we wonder how other people
can be willing to live so far off.

This Winnipeg gentleman says that the winters °
are no more severe at Fort Garry than at St. Paul,
and that the spring opens quite as early.

The temperature for the year at Fort Garry is
much like that of Montreal, as will be seen by the
following comparison : —

Spring. Summer. | Autumn. Winter.

Montreal, 43 70

Fort Garry,

58 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

This shows the mean temperatures for the three
months of each season. Though the mercury is
ten degrees lower at Fort Garry in the winter than
at Montreal, there is less wind, fewer raw days,
much less snow, and, taken all in all, the climate is
more agreeable.

Bidding good hy to the courteous commander of
the fort, who supplies that portion of our party
going to the Missouri with an escort, we gallop on
through this “ Paradise,” starting flocks of plovers
from the waving grass, and bringing down, now
and then, a prairie chicken.

Far away, on the verge of the horizon, we can
see our wagons, — mere specks.

What a place for building a railway! Not a
hillock nor a hollow, not a curve or loss of gra-
dient; timber enough on the river for ties. And
“when built, what a place to let on steam! The
engineer may draw his thrott.z-valve and give the
piston full head. Here will be the place to see
what iron, steel, and steam can do.

We pitch our tents for the night in the suburbs
of Burlington, not far from the hotel and _post-
office. The hotel, which just now is the only
building in town, is built of logs. It is not very
spacious inside, but it has all the universe out-
side !

Once a week the mail-carrier passes from Fort
Abercrombie to Pembina, and as there are a hall:

alt

| | al oT

A | y// " I) ij 77
PT AM
I seg

g Ne / ‘
dim;

| “i

oh
sy

M) h
/ I

My,

( A |
| Dl | HA MW A i]

VALLEY

RIVER

RED

THE RED RIVER COUNTRY. 59

dozen pioneers and half-breeds within a radius of
thirty miles of Burlington, a post-office has been
established here, which is kept in a shed adjoining
the hotel.

The postmaster gives us a cordial greeting. It
is a pleasure to hear this bluff but wide-awake
German say, “O, I have been acquainted with
you for a fong while. I followed you through the
war and around the world.”

From first to last,in letters from the battle-field,
from the various countries of the world, and in
these notes of travel, it has ever been my aim to
write for the comprehension of the people; and
such spontaneous and uncalled-for commendation
of my efforts out here upon the prairies was more
orateful than many a well-meant paragraph from
the public press.

While pitching our tents, a flock of pigeons flew
past, and down in the woods along the bank of
the river we could hear their cooing. Those who
had shot-guns went to the hunt; while some of
us tried the river for fish, but returned luckless.
The supper was good enough, however, without
trout or pickerelh Who zan ask for anything
better than prairie chicken, plover, duck, pork,
and pigeons ?

Then, when hunger is appeased, we sit around
the camp-fire and think of the future of this para-
dise. Near by is another camp-fire.

60 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

I see by its glimmering light a stalwart man
with shaggy beard and a slouched hat. The emi-
grant’s wife sits on the other side of the fire, and
by its light I see that she wears a faded linsey-
woolsey dress, that her hair is uncombed, and that
she has not given much attention to her toilet.
Two frowzy-headed children, a boy and a girl, are
romping in the grass. The worldly effects of this
family are in that canvas-covered ox-wagon, with
a chicken-coop at the hinder part, and a tin kettle
dangling beneath the axle. This emigrant has
come from Iowa. He is moving into this valley
“to take up a claim.” That is, he is going to se-
lect a piece of choice land under the Homestead
Act, build a cabin, and “make a break in the per-
ra-ry,” he says.

He will be followed by others. The tide is
setting in rapidly, and by the time the railway
company are ready to carry freight there will be
population enough here to support the road.

We have an early start in the morning. Our
route is along a highway, upon which there is more
travel than upon many of the old turnpikes of
New England for Winnipeg, and the Hudson Bay
posts receive all their supplies over this road.

At our noonday halt we fall in with Father
Genin, a French Catholic priest, who lives on the
bank of the river in a log-hut. He comes out to
see us, wearing a long black bombazine priestly

THE RED RIVER COUNTRY. 61

gown, and low-crowned hat. He is in the prime
of life, was educated at Paris, came to Quebec, and
is assigned to the Northwest. He has sailed over
Lake Winnipeg, and paddled his canoe on the Sas-
katchawan and Athabasca.

“My parish,” he says, “reaches from St. Paul to
the Rocky Mountains.’ He speaks in glowing
terms of the country up “in the Northwest,” — as
if we, who are now sixteen hundred miles from
Boston, had not reached the Northwest!

Our talk with Father Genin, and his enthusias-
tic description of the Saskatchawan Valley, has
set us to thinking of this region, to which the
United States once held claim, and which might
now have been a part of our domain if it had not
been for the pusillanimity of President Polk.

Mackenzie was the first European who gave to
the world an account of the country lying between
us and the Arctic Sea. He was in this valley in
1789, and was charmed with it. He made his
way down to Lake Winnipeg, thence up the Sas-
katchawan to Athabasca Lake. At the carrying-
place between the Saskatchawan and Athabasca
rivers, at Portage la Loche, he discovered springs
of petroleum, which are thus described : —

“Twenty-five miles from the fork are some
bituminous springs, into which a pole may be
inserted without the least resistance. The bitumen
is in a fluid state, and when mixed with resin is

62 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

used to gum the canoes. In its heated state it
emits a smell like sea-coal. The banks of Slave
River, which are elevated, discover veins of the
same bituminous quality.” *

His winter quarters were near Lake Athabasca,
at Fort Chippewayan, more than thirteen hundred
miles northwest from Chicago. He thus writes in
regard to the country : — |

“Tn the fall of 1787, when I first arrived at
Athabasca, Mr. Pond was settled on the bank of the
Elk River, where he remained three years, and had
as fine a kitchen-garden as I ever saw in Canada”
(p. 127).

Of the climate in winter he says that the be-
ginning was cold, and about one foot of snow fell.
The last week in December and the first week in
January were marked by warm southwest breezes,
which dissolved all the snow. Wild geese ap-
peared cn the 13th of March; and on the 5th of
April the snow had entirely disappeared. On the
20th he wrote :—

“The trees are budding, and many plants are in
blossom” (p. 150).

Mackenzie left the “Old Establishment,” as one
of the posts of the Hudson Bay Company was
called, on the Peace River, in the month of May,
for the Rocky Mountains. He followed the stream
through the gap of the mountains, passed to the

* General History of the Fur-Trade, p. 87.

THE RED RIVER COUNTRY. 63

head-waters of Fraser River, and descended that
stream to the Pacific. He thus describes the coun-
try along the Peace River : —

“This magnificent theatre of nature has all the
decorations which the trees and animals can afford
it. Groves of poplars in every shape vary the
scene, and their intervales are relieved with vast
herds of elk and buffaloes,—the former choosing
the steeps and uplands, the latter preferring the
plains. The whole country displayed an exube-
rant verdure; the trees that bear blossoms were
advancing fast to that delightful appearance, and
the velvet rind of their branches reflecting the
oblique rays of a rising or setting sun added a
splendid gayety to the scene which no expressions
of mine are qualified to describe” (p. 154).

This was in latitude 55° 17’, about fourteen hun-
dred miles from St. Paul.

The next traveller who enlightened the world
upon this region was Mr. Harman, a native of Ver-
gennes, Vermont, who became connected with the
Northwest Fur Company, and passed seventeen
years in British America. He reached Lake Win-
nipeg in 1800, and his first winter was passed
west of the lake. Under date of January 5th we
have this record in his journal: —

“Beautiful weather. Saw in different herds at
least a thousand buffaloes grazing” (p. 68). |

“ February 17th.— We have now about a foot

64 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE,

and a half of snow on the ground. This morning
one of our people killed a buffalo on the prairie
opposite the fort” (p. 73).

“ March 14th. — The greater part of the snow is
dissolved.” *

On the 6th of April Mr. Harman writes: “I
have taken a ride on horseback to a place where
our people are making sugar. My path led me
over a small prairie, and through a wood, where I
saw a great variety of birds that were straining
their tuneful throats as if to welcome tne return
of another spring; small animals were running
about, or skipping from tree to tree, and at the
same time were to be seen, swans, bustards, ducks,
etc. swimming about in the rivers and ponds. All
these things together rendered my ramble beautiful
beyond description” (p. 75).

During the month of April there were two
snow-storms, but the snow disappeared nearly as
fast as *t fell.

One winter was passed by Mr. Harman in the
country beyond Lake Athabasca, on the Athabasca
River, where he says the snow during the winter
“was at no time more than two feet and a half
deep” (p. 174).

* On the 16th of March, 1870, while these notes were under
review, the streets of Boston were deep with snow, and twenty-
four trains were blockaded on the Boston and Albany Railroad
between Springfield and Albany.

THE RED RIVER COUNTRY. 65

On May 6th he writes : “ We have planted our po-
tatoes and sowed most of our garden-seeds ” (p. 178),

“ June 2d. — The seeds which we sowed in the
garden have sprung up and grown remarkably
well. The present prospect is that strawberries,
red raspberries, shad-berries, cherries, etc. will be
abundant this season.”

“ July 21st.— We have cut down our barley,
and I think it is the finest that I ever saw in any
country. The soil on the points of land along
this river is excellent” (p. 181).

“ October 3d. — We have taken our potatoes out
of the ground, and find that nine bushels which
we planted on the 10th of May last have produced
alittle more than one hundred and fifty bushels.
The other vegetables in our garden have yielded
an increase much in the same proportion, which is
suflicient proof that the soil of the points of land
along this river is good. Indeed, I am of opinion
that wheat, rye, barley, oats, peas, etc. would grow
well in the plains around us” (p. 186).

He passed several winters at the head-waters of
Peace .River, in the Rocky Mountains. In his
journal we have these records : —

“ May 7th. — The weather is very fine, and vege-
tation is far advanced for the season. Swans and
ducks are numerous in the lakes and rivers.”

“May 22d — Planted potatoes and sowed gar-
(len-seeds,”

66 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

“October 3d.— We have taken our vegetables
out of the ground. We have forty-one bushels of
potatoes, the produce of one bushel planted last
spring. Our turnips, barley, etc. have produced
well” (p. 257).

In 1814 he writes under date of September
3d: “A few days since we cut down our barley,
The five quarts which I sowed on the Ist of May
have yielded as many bushels. One acre of
ground, producing in the same proportion, would
yield eighty-four bushels. This is sufficient proof
that the soil in many places in this quarter is
favorable to agriculture” (p. 267).

Sir John Richardson, who explored the arctic
regions by this route, says: “ Wheat is rais: |
with profit at Fort Liard, let. 60° 5’ N., lon. 122
31' W., and four or five hundred feet above the sea.
This locality, however, being in the vicinity of the
Rocky Mountains, is subject to summer frosts, and
the grain does not ripen every year, though in
favorable seasons it gives a good return.”

In 1857, Captain Palliser, of the Royal Engi-
neers, was sent out by the English government
to explore the region between Lake Superior and
the Pacific, looking towards the construction of a
railroad across the continent, through the British
Possessions. His report to the government is
published in the Blue-Book.

Speaking of the country along the Assinniboine,

THE RED RIVER COUNTRY. 67

he says: “The Assinniboine has a course of nearly
three hundred miles ; les wholly within a fertile
and partially wooded country. The lower part of
the valley for seventy miles, before it joins the
Red River, affords land of surpassing richness and
fertility” (p. 9).

Of the South Saskatchawan, he says that “it
flows through a thick-wooded country” (p. 10).

The natural features of the north branch of that
river are set forth in glowing language : —

“The richness of the natural pasture in many
places on the North Saskatchawan and its trib-
utary, Battle River, can hardly be exaggerated.
Its value does not consist in its long rank grasses
or in its great quantity, but from its fine quality,
comprising nutritious species of grasses, along with
natural vetches in great variety, which remain
throughout the winter juicy and fit for the nour-
ishment of stock.

“ Almost anywhere along the Saskatchawan a
sufficiency of good soil is everywhere to be found,
fit for all purposes, both for pasture and tillage,
extending towards the thick-wooded hills, and also
to be found in the region of the lakes, between
Forts Pitt and Edmonton. In almost every direc-
tion around Edmonton the land is fine, excepting
only the hilly country at the higher level, such as
the Beacon Hills; even there there is nothing
like sterility, only the surface is too much broken

68 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

to be occupied while more level country can be
obtained” (p. 10).

Going up the Saskatchawan he discovered beds
of coal, which are thus deseribed : —

“Tn the upper part of the Saskatchawan country,
coal of fine quality occurs abundantly, and may
hereafter be very useful. It is quite fit to be em-
ployed in the smelting of iron from the ore of that
metal, which occurs in large quantities in the same
strata” (p. 11).

Two hundred miles north of this coal deposit,
Mackenzie discovered the springs of petroleum and
coal strata along the banks of the streams. Har-
man saw the same.

Palliser wintered on the Saskatchawan, and
speaks thus of the climate :—

“The climate in winter is more rigorous than
that of Red River, and partial thaws occur long
before the actual opening of spring. The winter
is much the same in duration, but the amount of
snow that falls rapidly decreases as we approach
the mountains. The river generaily freezes about
the 12th of November, and breaks up from the
17th to the 20th of April. During the winter
season of five months the means of travelling and
transport are greatly facilitated by the snow, the
ordinary depth of which is sufficient for the use
of sleighs, without at the same time being great
enough to impede horses.

THE RED RIVER COUNTRY. 69

“The whole of this region of country would be
valuable, not only for agriculture, but also for
mixed purposes of settlement. The whole region
is well wooded and watered, and enjoys a elimate
far preferable to that of either Sweden or Norway.
I have not only seen excellent wheat, but Indian
corn (which will not succeed in England or Ire-
land), ripening on Mr. Pratt’s farm at the Qui
Appelle Lakes in 1857” (p. 11).

Father De Smet, a Catholic missionary, in 1845
crossed the Rocky Mountains from British Colum-
bia, eastward to the head-waters of the south
branch of the Saskatchawan, and passed along the
eastern base of the mountains to Edmonton. He
characterizes the country as “an ocean of prairies.”

“The entire region,” he says, “in the vicinity of
the eastern chain of the Rocky Mountains, serving
as their base for thirty or sixty miles, is extremely
fertile, abounding in forests, plains, prairies, lakes,
streams, and mineral springs. The rivers and
streams are innumerable, and on every side offer
situations favorable for the construction of mills.
The northern and southern branches of the Sas-
katchawan water the district I have traversed for
a distance of about three hundred miles. Forests
of pines, cypress, cedars, poplar and aspen trees,
as well as others of different kinds, occupy a large
portion of it. The country would be capable of
supporting a large population, and the soil is favor-

70 _' THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

able for the production of wheat, barley, potatoes,
and beans, which grow here as well as in the more
southern countries.”

It is a region abundantly supplied with coal of
the lignite formation. Father Genin has a speci-
men of lignite taken from the banks of Maple

tiver, about seven miles from our camp. It isa
small branch of the Red River flowing from the
west. If we were to travel northwest a little more
than one hundred miles, we should come to the
Little Souris or Mouse River, a branch of the As-
sinniboine, where we should find seams of the same
kind of coal. Continuing on to the Saskatchawan,
we shall find it appearing all along the river from
Fort Edmonton to the Rocky Mountains, a distance
of between three and four hundred miles.

Dr. Hector, geologist to the exploring expedition
under Captain Palliser, thus describes the coal on
Red Deer River, a branch of the South Saskatcha-
wan :—

“The lignite forms beds of great thickness, one
eroup of seams measuring twenty-five feet in thick-
ness, of which twelve feet consist of pure compact
lignite. At one point the seam was on fire, and the
Indians say that for as long as they can remember
the fire at this place has not been extinguished,
summer or winter” (p. 233).

Father De Smet passed down the river in 1845,
and it was then on fire. If we were to travel

THE RED RIVER COUNTRY. 71

northward from the Red Deer to the Peace River,
we should find the same formation; and if we were
to glide down the Mackenzie towards the Arctic
Sea, we should, according to the intrepid voyager
whose name it bears, find seams of coal along its
banks.

Mr. Bourgeau, botanist to the Palliser Exploring
Expedition, in a letter addressed to Sir William
Hooker, has the following remarks upon the capa-
bilities of the Northwest for supporting a dense
population :—

“Tt remains for me to call the attention of the
English government to the advantages there would
be in establishing agricultural districts in the vast
plains of Rupert’s Land, and particularly in the
Saskatchawan, in the neighborhood of Fort Carl-
tou. This district is much better adapted to the
culture of staple crops than one would have been
inclined to believe from this high latitude. In ef-
fect, the few attempts at the culture of cereals
already made in the vicinity of the Hudson Bay
Company’s posts demonstrate by their success how
easy it would be to obtain products sufficiently
large to remunerate the efforts of the agricultur-
ist. Then, in order to put the land under cultiva-
tion, it would be necessary only to till the better
portions of the soil. The prairies offer natural
pasturage as favorable for the maintenance of nu-
inerous herds as if they had been artificially cre-

12 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

ated. The construction of houses for habitation
and for pioneer development would involve but
little expense, because in many parts of the coun-
try, independent of wood, one would find fitting
stones for building purposes, and it is easy to find
clay for bricks..... The vetches found here are
as fitting for nourishment of cattle as the clover of
European pasturage. The abundance of buffaloes,
and the facility with which herds of horses and
oxen increase, demonstrate that it would be enouch
to shelter animals in winter, and to feed them
in the shelters with hay..... In the gardens of
the Hudson Bay Company’s posts, beans, peas,
and French beans have been successfully culti-
vated; also cabbages, turnips, carrots, rhubarb, and
currants” (p. 250).

The winters of the Northwest are wholly unlike
those of the Eastern and Middle States. The
meteorologist of Palliser’s Expedition says : “ Along
the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains there is
a narrow strip of country in which there is never
more than a few inches of snow on the ground.
About forty miles to the eastward, however, the
fall begins to be much greater, but during the win-
ter rarely exceeds two feet. Qn the prairies the
snow evaporates rapidly, and, except in hollows
where it is drifted, never accumulates; but in the
woods it is protected, and in spring is often from
three to four feet deep” (p. 268).

THE RED RIVER COUNTRY. 73

Captain Palliser and party travelled from post
to post during the winter without difficulty. In
February, 1859, he travelled from Edmonton to
Lake St. Ann’s. On two nights the mercury was
frozen in the bulb, —as it is not unfrequently at
Franconia, New Hampshire. Exclusive of those
two cold nights, the mean of the temperature was
seventeen. He says: “ This was a trip made dur-
ing the coldest weather experienced in the country.
If proper precautions are taken, there is nothing
merely in extreme cold to stop travelling in the
wooded country, but the danger of freezing from
exposure upon the open plains is so great that they
cannot be ventured on with safety during any part
of the winter” (p. 268).

The Wesleyan Missionary Society of England
has a mission at Edmonton, under the care of
Rev. Thomas Woolsey. ‘The following extracts
from his journal will show the progress of the
winter and spring season in 1855 :—

“Nov. 1. A little snow has fallen for the first time.

“ 12. Swamps frozen over.
“ 13. A little more snow.
“17. Crossed river on the ice.

Dec. 2. The past’ week has been remarkably mild.
‘9. More snow.

1856, Jan. 8 to 11. More like spring than winter.

Jan. 13, Fine open weather.

“ 17. Somewhat colder.
4

74. THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

Feb. 14. Weather open.
“« 16. Snow rapidly disappearing.
Mar. 11. More snow.
“ 17. Firing pasture-grounds to-day.
‘© 18, Thunder-storm.
“* 21. Ducks and geese returning.
«30. More snow, but it is rapidly disappearing.
«« 31. Snow quite gone.
April 7. Ploughing commenced.
“« 28. First wheat sown.”

The succeeding winter was more severe, and

three feet of snow fell during the season, but the
spring opened quite as early as in 1856. The
comparative mildness of the winter climate of all
this vast area of the West and Northwest, at the
head-waters of the Missouri, and in the British
dominions, as far north as latitude 70°, is in a ereat
measure due to the warm winds of the Pacific.
In the autumn of 1868 I crossed the Pacific,
from Japan to San Francisco, in the Pacific mail-
steamer Colorado. Soon after leaving the Bay of

Yokohama we entered the Kuro-Siwo, or the Diack —

Ocean River of the Asiatic coast. This ocean cur-
rent bears a remarkable resemblance to the Gulf
Stream of the Atlantic. Along the eastern shore
of Japan the water, like that along Virginia and
the Carolinas, is very cold, but we suddenly pass
_ into the heated river, which, starting from the
| vicinity of the Philippine Islands, laves the east-

‘

THE RED RIVER COUNTRY. 75

ern shore of Formosa, and rushes past the Bay of
Yeddo at the rate of cighty miles per day. This
heated river strikes across the Northern Pacific to |
British Columbia and Puget Sound, giving a genial
climate nearly up to the Arctic Circle. No iceberes
are ever encountered in the North Pacific. The
influence of the Kuro-Siwo upon the Northwest is
very much like that which the Gulf Stream has
upon England and Norway. It gives to Oregon,
Washington, British Columbia, and Vancouver Isl-
and winters so mild that the people cannot lay in
a supply of ice’ fer the summer. Roses bloom in
the gardens throughout the year. So the water
heated beneath the tropics, off the eastern coast of
Siam and north of Borneo, flows along the shore
of Japan up to the Aleutian Isles, imparting its
heat to the air, which, under the universal law,
ascends when heated, and sweeps over che Rocky
Mountains, and tempers the climate east of them
almost to Hudson Bay.

So wonderfully arranged is this mighty machin-
ery of nature, that millions of the human race in
coming years will rear their habitations and enjoy
the blessings of civilization in regions that other-
wise would be pathless solitudes. |

In the meteorological register kept at Carlton
House, in lat. 52° 51’, on the eastern limit of the
Saskatchawan Plain, eleven hundred feet above the
sea, we find this entry: “ At this place westerly

76 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

winds bring mild weather, and the easterly ones
are attended by fog and snow.”

By the following tabular statement we see ata
glance the snow-fall at various places in the United
States. We give average depths for the winter as
set down in Blodget’s climatology.

Oxford County, Maine. : . 90. inches.
Dover, New Hampshire : 68 «

Montreal, Canada . ; . . 66 rf
Burlington, Vermont . . : 85 “
Worcester, Massachusetts ‘ . OO ¢
Cincinnati, Ohio. , ; , 19 6
Burlington, Iowa. ; ‘ oko: <7
Beloit, Wisconsin ; , ; 25 a
Fort Abercrombie, Dakota ; . 12 66

From this testimony I am impelled to believe
that the immense area west of Lake Superior and
south of the 60th parallel is as capable of being
settled as those portions of Russia, Sweden, and
Norway south of that degree, now swarming with
people. That parallel passes through St. Peters-
burg, Stockholm, Christiania, and the Shetland
Isles on the eastern hemisphere, Fort Liard and
Central Alaska on the western.

THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST, 77

CHAPTER IV.
THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST.

UNDREDS of Winnipeggers were upon the

road, either going to or returning from St.
Cloud, from whence all grocerivs and other sup-
plies are obtained. The teams consist of a single
horse or ox, not unfrequently a cow, harnessed to
a two-wheeled cart. The outfit is a curiosity. The
wheels are six or seven feet in diameter, and very
dishing. A small rack is affixed to the wooden
axle. The concern is composed wholly of wood,
with a few raw-hide thongs. It is primitive in
design and construction, and though so rude, though
there is not an ounce of iron about the cart, it
serves the purpose of these voyagers admirably.
Our teams have been stuck in the mud, at the
crossings of creeks, half a dozen times a day; but
those high-wheeled carts are borne up by the grass
roots where ours go down to the hub.

There is a family to each cart, — father, mother,
and a troop of frowzy-headed, brown-faced chil-
dren, who, though shoeless and hatless and half
naked, are as happy as the larks singing in the
meadows, or the plover skimming the air on quiv-
ering wings. They travel in companies, — fifteen

78 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

or twenty carts in a caravan. When night comes
on, the animals are turned out to graze ; the fami-
lies cook each their.own scanty supply of food,
smoke their pipes by the glimmering camp-fire,
tell their stories of adventure among the buffaloes,
roll themselves in a blanket, creep beneath their
earts, — all the family in a pile if the night is cool,
— sleep soundly, and are astir before daylight, and
on the move by sunrise. The journey down and
back is between eight and nine hundred miles ; and
as the average distance travelled is only about
twenty miles a day, it takes from forty to iifty
days to make the round trip. No wonder the
people of that settlement are anxious to have a
railroad reach the Red River.

Leaving the Pembina road and striking west-
ward to the river, we descend fhe bank to the
bottom-land, which is usually about twenty-five
feet below the general surface of the valley. We
cross the river by a rope ferry kept by a half-breed,
and strike out upon the Dakota plain. The trail
that we are upon bears northwest, and is the main
road to Fort Totten, near Lake Miniwakan, or the
“Devil’s Lake,” and the forts on the Upper Mis-
souri. Here, as upon the Minnesota side, the wild-
flowers are blooming in luxuriance. Our horses
remorselessly trample the roses, the convolvulus,
and the lilies beneath their feet.

The prairie chickens are whirring in every direc-

THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST. 79

tion, and one of our bluff and burly teamsters, who
is at home upon the prairies, who in the First Min-
nesota Regiment faced the Rebels in all the battles
of the Peninsula, who was in the thickest of the
fight at Gettysburg, who has hunted Indians over
the Upper Missouri region, who is as keen-sighted
as a hawk, takes the grouse right and left as
they rise. Huis slouched hat bobs up and down
everywhere. He seems to know just where the
gaine is; now he is at your right hand, now upon
the run a half-mile away upon the prairies. He
stops, raises his gun,—there is a puff of smoke,
another, and he has two more chickens in his bag.
We are sure of having good suppers as long as he
is about.

We reach Dakota City, — another thriving town
of one log-house,— peopled by Monsieur Marchaud,
a French Canadian, his Chippewa wife and twelve
children.

While our tents are being pitched, we cross the
river by another ferry to Georgetown, —a place
consisting of two dwellings and a large storehouse
owned by the Hudson Bay Company. This is the
present steamboat landing, though sometimes the
one steamer now on the river goes up to Fort
Abercrombie. The river is narrow and winding
south of this point, and not well adapted to navi-
gation.

We find an obliging young Scotchman with a

80 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

thin-faced wife in possession of the property be-
longing to the Company. He takes care of the
premises throughsthe year on a salary of two hun-
dred dollars, and has his tea, sugar, and groceries
furnished him. He can cultivate as much land as
he pleases, though he does not own a foot of it, —
neither does the Company own an acre. It belongs
to the people of the United States, and any brave
young man with a large-hearted wife may become
possessor of these beautiful acres if he will,.with
the moral certainty of finding them quadrupled in
value in five years.

This great highway of the North lies along the
eastern bank of the river. We heve travelled over
it all the way from Fort Abercrombie, passing and
meeting teams. Here we see a train of thirty
wagons drawn by oxen, loaded with goods consist-
ing of boxes of tea, sugar, salt, pork, bacon, and
bales of cloth, which are shipped by steamer from —
this landing. The teas come from England to
Montreal, are there shipped to Milwaukie, and
transported by rail to St. Cloud. Each chest is
closely packed in canvas and taken through in
bond. The transportation of the Hudson Bay Com-
pany between this place and St. Cloud amounts to
about seven hundred tons per annum.

In addition, the Red River transportation car-
ried on by the Indians and half-breeds is very
large. About twenty-five hundred carts pass down

THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST. 81

and up this highway during the year, each one
carrying upon an average nine hundred pounds.

Besides all this there is the United States gov-
ernment transportation to Fort Abercrombie and
the forts beyond, amounting last year to eighteen
hundred tons. The rates paid by the War Depart-
ment government for transportation are $ 1.362 per
hundred pounds for every hundred miles. All of
this traffic will be transferred at once to the North-
ern Pacific Railroad upon its completion to the Red
River.

The estimated value of the Red River trade is
ten millions of dollars per annum, and it is in-
creasing every year.

The keen-eyed hunters of our party have been
on the lookout for a stray buffalo or a deer, but
the buffaloes are a hundred miles away. We hear
that they have come north of the Missouri in great
numbers, and those who are to go West antici-
pate rare sport. or want of a buffalo-steak we
put up with beef. It is juicy and tender, from one
of Mr. Marchaud’s heifers, which has been pur-
chased for the party.

It is a supper fit for sovereigns, — and every one
is a sovereign out here, on the unsurveyed lands,
of which we, in common with the rest of the peo-
ple, are proprietors. We are lords of the manor,
and we have sat down to a feast. Our eggs are
newly laid by the hens of Dakota City, our milk

4* Fr

82 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

is fresh from the cows whose bells are tinkling in
the bushes along the bank of the river, and the
cakes upon our table are of the finest flour in
the world. Hunger furnishes the best relish, and
when the cloth is removed we sit around the
camp-fire during the evening, passing away the
hours with wit, repartee, and jest, mingled with
sober argument and high intellectual thought.

Our tents are pitched upon the river’s bank.
Far away to the scuth we trace the dim outline
of the timber on the streams flowing in from the
west. Turning our eyes in that direction, we see
only the level sea of verdure,—the green grass
waving in the evening breeze. At this place our
company will divide,— Governor Marshall, Mr.
Holmes, and several other gentlemen, going on to
the Missouri, while the rest of us will travel east-
ward to Lake Superior.

It would be a pleasure to go with them, — to
ride over the rolling prairies, to fall in with
buffaloes and try my pony in a race with a big
bull. It would be thrilling, — only if the hunted
should right about face, and toss the hunter on his
horns, the thrill would be of a different sort!

We sit by our camp-fires at night with our faces
and hands smeared with an abominable mixture
prepared by our M. D., ostensibly to keep the mos- —
quitoes from presenting their bills, but which we
surmise is a little game of his to daub us witha

THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST. 83

diabolical mixture of glycerine, soap, and tar!
Our tents are as odorous’as the shop of a keeper
of naval stores. There is an all-pervading smell
of oakum and turpentine. Clouds of mosquitoes
come, take a whiff, and retire in disgust. We can
hear them having a big swear at the Doctor for
compounding such an ointment !

I think of the country which those who are
coing west will see, and of the region beyond, — the
valley of the Yellowstone, the Missouri, the slopes
of the Rocky Mountains, and the hills of Montana,
—territory to be included in the future Empire
of the Northwest. I have written the word, but
it bears no political meaning in these notes. It
has the same signification as when appuiied to the
State of New York. The Empire of the North-
west will be the territory lying north of the cen-
tral ridge of the continent. Milwaukie may be
taken as a starting-point for a survey of this im-
perial domain. That city is near the 43d parallel ;
following it westward, we see that it passes over
the mountain-range on whose northern slopes the
southern affluents of the Yellowstone take their
rise. All the fertile valleys of the Columbia and
its tributaries lie north of this parallel; all the
streams of the Upper Missouri country, and the
magnificent water-system of Puget Sound, and the
intricate bays and inlets of British Columbia,
reaching on to Alaska, having their only counter-

84. _. THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

part in the fiords of Norway, are north of that
degree of latitude. I have already taken a view
of the region now comprised in the British do-
minions east of the Rocky Mountains; but equally
interesting will be a review of the territories of the
Republic, — Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and
Washington, also British Columbia and Vancouver.

Dakota contains -a little more than a hundred
and fifty thousand square miles, — nearly enough
territory to make four States as large as Ohio.

“The climate and soil of Dakota,” says the
Commissioner of Public Lands, General Wilson, in
his Report for 1869, “are exceedingly favorable to
the growth of wheat, corn, and other cereals, while
all the fruits raised in the Northern States are
here produced in the greatest perfection. ....
The wheat crop varied from twenty to forty bush-
els to the acre. Oats have produced from fifty to
seventy bushels to the acre, and are of excellent
quality” (p. 144).

Settlements are rapidly extending up the Mis-
souri, and another year will behold this northern
section teeming with emigrants. The northern
section of the territory is bare of wood, but the
southern portion is well supplied with timber in
the Black Hills.

Two thousand square miles of the region of the
Black Hills, says Professor Hayden, geologist to
the United States Exploring Expedition under

~

THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST. 85

General Reynolds, is covered with excellent pine
timber. That is an area half as large as the State
of Connecticut, ample for the southern section ;
while the settlers of the northern portion will be
within easy distance by rail of the timbered lands
of Minnesota.

The northern half of Wyoming is north of the
line we have drawn from Milwaukie to the Pa-
cific, and of this Territory the Land Commissioner
says: “A large portion of Wyoming produces a
luxuriant growth of short nutritious grass, upon
which cattle will feed and fatten during summer
and winter without other provender. Those lands,
even in their present condition, are superior for
crazing. The climate is mild and healthy, the air
and water pure, and springs abundant” (p. 159).

Beyond the 104th meridian lies Montana, a lit-
tle larger than Dakota, with area enough for four
States of the size of Ohio.

At St. Paul I was fortunate enough to fall in
with Major-General Hancock, who had just re-
turned from Montana, and who was enthusiastic in
its praise.

“T consider it,’ he said, “to be one of the first
grazing countries in the world. Its valleys are
exceedingly fertile. It is capable of sustaining a
dense population.”

Wheat grows as luxuriantly in the valleys at
the base of the Rocky Mountains as in Minnesota.

86 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

The Territory appears to be richer in minerals than
any other section of the country, the gold product
surpassing that of any other State or Territory.
More than one hundred million dollars have been
taken from the mines of Montana since the discov-
ery of gold in this territory in 1862. Coal appears
upon the Yellowstone in veins ten, fifteen, and
twenty feet in thickness. It is found on the Big
Horn and on the Missouri.

“From the mouth of the Big Horn,” says Pro-
fessor Hayden, “to the union of the Yellowstone
with the Missouri, nearly all the way, lignite (coal)
beds occupy the whole country..... The beds
are well developed, and at least twenty or thirty
seams are shown, varying in purity and thickness
from a few inches to seven feet” (Report, p. 59).

The mountains are covered with wood, and there
will be no lack of fuel in Montana. The timber
lands of this Territory are estimated by the Land
Commissioner to cover nearly twelve millions of
acres, —— an area as large as New Hampshire and
Vermont combined. The agricultural land, or
land that may be ploughed, is estimated at
twenty-three million acres, nearly as much as is
contained in the State of Ohio. The grazing lands
are put down at sixty-nine millions, — or a region
as large as New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jer-
sey together !

Is n’t it cold? Are not the winters intolerable?

THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST. 87

Are not the summers short in Montana? Many
times the questions have been asked.

The temperature of the climate in winter will
be seen from the following thermometrical record
kept at Virginia City :—

1866. Dec. Mean for the month, 31° above zero,

1867. Jan. i " " 23°.73 .

“c Feb. iT) “ 6c 26° 6h cc

The summer climate is exceedingly agreeable,
and admirably adapted to fruit culture.

In July last Mr. Milnor Roberts, Mr. Thomas
Canfield, and other gentlemen of the Pacific ex-
ploring party, were in Montana. Mr. Roberts
makes our mouths water by his description of the
fruits of that Territory.

“ Missoula,” he says, “is a’ thriving young town
near the western base of the Rocky Mountains,
containing a grist-mill, saw-mill, two excellent
stores, and from twenty-five to thirty dwellings, a
number of them well built. I visited McWhirk’s
garden of five acres, where I found ripe tomatoes,
watermelons, muskmelons, remarkably fine pota-
toes, beans, peas, and squashes ; also young apple-
trees and other fruit-trees, and a very fine collec-
tion of flowers; and all this had been brought
about from the virgin soil in two years, and would
this year (1869) yield the owner over two thousand
dollars in gold, the only currency known in Mon-
tana” (Report, p. 23).

88 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

This fruit and flower garden is about one hun-
dred miles from the top of the divide between the
Atlantic and the Pacific.

Deer Lodge City, fifteen miles from the dividing
ridge, is situated in the Deer Lodge Valley, and its
attractions are thus set forth by Mr. Roberts: —.

“The Deer Lodge Valley is very wide, in places
ten to fifteen miles from the hills on one side to
the hills on the other, nearly level, and everywhere |
clothed with rich grass, upon which we observed
numerous herds of tame cattle and horses feeding.
The Deer Lodge Creek flows through it, and adds
immensely to its value as an agricultural region.
Some farms are cultivated ; but farming is yet in
its infancy, and there are thousands of acres of -
arable land here and elsewhere in Montana await-
ing settlement” (p. 25).

West of Montana is Idaho, containing eighty-six
thousand square miles,— large enough for two
States of the size of Ohio.. Nearly all of this
Territory lies north of the 43d parallel. It is wa-
tered by the Columbia and its tributaries, — moun-
tain streams fed by melting snows.

“The mountains of Idaho,” says the Land Com-
missioner, in his exhaustive Report for 1869, “ often
attain great altitude, having peaks rising above the
line of perpetual snow, their lower slopes being
furrowed with numerous streams and alternately
clothed with magnificent forests and rich grasses.

THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST. 89

The plains are elevated table-lands covered with
indigenous grasses, constituting pasturage unsur-
passed in any section of our country. Numerous
large flocks of sheep and herds of domestic cattle
now range these pastures, requiring but little other
sustenance throughout the entire year, and no
protection from the weather other than that af-
forded by the lower valleys or the cafions, in which
many of the streams take their way through the
upland country. The valleys are beautiful, fertile
depressions of the surface, protected from the
searching winds of summer and searching blasts
of winter, each intersected by some considerable
stream, adjoining which on either bank, and ex-
tending to the commencement of the rise of table-
land or mountain, are broad stretches of prairies
or meadows producing the richest grasses, and
with the aid of irrigation, crops of grain, fruit, and
vegetables superior to those of any of the Eastern
States, and rivalling the vegetation of the Missis-
sippi Valley. The pastures of these valleys are
generally uncovered with snow in the most severe
winters, and afford excellent food for cattle and
sheep, the herbage drying upon the stalk during
the later summer and autumn months into a su-
perior quality of hay. As no artificial shelter from
the weather is here required for sheep or cattle,
stock-raising is attended with but little outiay and
is very profitable, promising soon to become one

90 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

of the greatest sources of wealth in this rapidly
developing but still underrated Territory. It was
considered totally valueless except for mining pur-
poses, and uninviting to the agriculturist, until
emigration disclosed its hidden resources.

“Tt is the favorite custom of herdsmen in Idaho
to reserve their lower meadows for winter pastures,
allowing the stock to range the higher plains dur-
ing spring, summer, and autumn; the greater ex-
tent of the table-lands, and the superior adapta-
bility of the valleys for agriculture presenting
reasons for the adoption of this method as one of
economical importance.

“The climate of Idaho varies considerably with
the degrees of latitude through which its limits
extend, but not so much as would naturally be
supposed from its great longitudinal extension ;
the isothermal lines of the Territory, running from
east to west, have a well-defined northward varia-
tion, caused by the influence of air currents from
the Pacific Ocean. Throughout the spring, sum-
mer, and autumn months, in the northern as well
as the southern sections, the weather is generally
delightful and salubrious; in the winter months
the range of the thermometer depends greatly upon
the altitude of the surface,— the higher mountains
being visited by extreme cold and by heavy falls
of snow; the lower mountain-ranges and the plains
having winters generally less severe than those of

THE EMPIRE OF TEE NORTHWEST. 91

northern Iowa and Wisconsin or central Minne-
gota, while greater dryness of the atmosphere
renders a lower fall of the thermometer less per-
ceptible ; and the valleys being rarely visited by
cold weather, high winds, or considerable falls of
snow. Considered in its yearly average, the cli-
mate is exactly adapted to sheep-growing and the
production of wool, the herding of cattle, and
manufacture of dairy products, the raising of
very superior breeds of horses, as well as the
culture of all Northern varieties of fruits, such
as apples, pears, plums, cherries, peaches, grapes,
and all of the ordinary cereals and vegetables ” (p.
164.)

This is all different from what «ve have con-
ceived the Rocky Mountains to be.

When the government reports of the explorations
of 1853 were issued, Jeff Davis was Secretary of
War, and he deliberately falsified the report of Gov-
ernor Stevens’s explorations from Lake Superior
to the valley of the Columbia. Governor Stevens
reported that the route passed through a region
highly susceptible of agriculture; brit the Secre-
tary of War, even then plotting treason, in his
summary of the advantages of the various routes,
asserted that Governor Stevens had overstated the
facts, and that there were not more than 1,000
square miles, or 640,000 acres, of agricultural lands.
The Land Commissioner in his Report estimates the

92 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

amount of agricultural lands at 16,925,000 acres,
The amount of improved lands in Ohio in 1860
was 12,665,000 acres, or more than 4,000,000 less
than the available agricultural lands in Idaho.
These are lands that need no irrigation. Of such
lands there are 14,000,000 acres, which, in the lan-
guage of the Commissioner, are “redeemable by
irrigation into excellent pasture and agricultural
lands.” The grazing-lands are estimated at
5,000,000 acres, the timbered lands at 7,500,000
acres, besides 8,000,000 acres of mineral lands. Al-
though the population-of Idaho probably does not
exceed 50,000, half of whom are engaged in min-
ing, the value of the agricultural products for 1868
amounted to $12,000,000, while the mineral pro-
duct was $10,000,000.

Passing on to Oregon we find a State containing
95,000 square miles, two and a half times larger
than Ohio.

“Oregon,” says General Wilson, in his Report
upon the public lands, “is peculiarly a crop-raising
and fruit-growing State, though by no means de-
ficient in valuable mineral resources. Possessing
a climate of unrivalled salubrity, abounding in
vast tracts of rich arable lands, heavily timbered
throughout its mountain ranges, watered by innu-
merable springs and streams, and subject to none
of the drawbacks arising from the chilling winds
and seasons of aridity which prevail farther south,

THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST, 93

it is justly considered the most favored region on
the Pacific slope as a home for an agricult:1ral and
manufacturing population” (p. 197).

Of “western Oregon,” he says, “the portion of
the State first settled embraces about 31,000
square miles, or 20,000,000 acres, being nearly one
third of the area of the whole State, and con-
tains the great preponderance of population and
wealth. Nearly the whole of this large extent of
country is valuable for agriculture and grazing ;
all of the productions common to temperate re-
gions may be cultivated here with success. When
the land is properly cultivated, the farmer rarely
fails to meet with an adequate reward for his la-
bors. The fruits produced here, such as apples,
pears, plums, quinces, and grapes, are of supe-
rior quality and flavor. Large quantities of ap-
ples are annually shipped to the San Francisco
market, where they usually command a higher
price than those of California, owing to their finer
flavor. |

“The valleys of the Willamette, Umpqua, and
Rouge Rivers, are embraced within this portion
of the State, and there is no region of country on
the continent presenting a finer field for agriculture
and stock-raising, because of the mildness of the
climate and the depth and richness of the soil.
Farmers make no provision for housing their cattle
during winter, and none is required; although in

94 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

about the same latitude as Maine on the Atlantic,
the winter temperature corresponds with that of
Savannah, Georgia” (p. 194).

North of Oregon lies the Territory of Washing-
ton, containing 70,000 square miles, lacking only
9,000 to make it twice as large as Ohio.

Our camp, where I am taking this westward
look, is pitched very near the 47th parallel, may
be five or six miles north of it. If I were to travel
due west along the parallel a little more than
twelve hundred miles, I should reach Olympia, the
capital of the Territory, situated on Puget Sound,
— the name given to that vast ramification of wa-
ters known as the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Admi-
ralty Inlet, Hood’s Canal, and Puget Sound, with a
shore line of 1,500 miles.

“There is no State in the Union,” says the
Land Commissioner, “and perhaps no country in
the world of the same extent, that offers so many
harbors and such excellent facilities for commerce ”
(p. 198).

The timbered lands of Washington are approxi-
mately estimated at 20,000,000 acres, and the prai-
rie lands cover an area equally great. The forests
embrace the red and yellow pine of gigantic
growth, often attaining the height of three hun-
dred feet, and from nine to twelve feet in diameter.
It is said that a million feet have been cut from a
single acre! Says the Commissioner, “The soil

THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST. 95

in the river-bottoms is thinly timbered with
maple, ash, and willow. These lands yield heavy
crops of wheat, barley, and oats, while vegetables
attain enormous size. The highlands are generally
rolling, and well adapted to cultivation... .. The
average yield of potatoes to the acre is six hun-
dred bushels, wheat forty, peas sixty, timothy-hay
five tons, and oats seventy bushels” (p. 199).

Mr. Roberts, who explored this region last year,
says that the great plain of the Columbia is “a
high rolling prairie, covered everywhere abundant-
ly with bunch-grass to the summits of the highest
hills ; treeless, excepting along the streams. This
is an immense grazing area of the most superior
character, interspersed with the valleys of peren-
nial streams, along which are lands that, when
settled by industrious farmers, will be of the most
productive character, as we have seen in the case
of a number of improvements already made;
while the climate is not only salubrious, but re-
markably attractive” (Report, p. 19).

He gives this estimate of the area suited to
agriculture and grazing :—

“In Washington Territory alone, on its eastern
side, there are at least 20,000 square miles, or
12,800,000 acres of the finest grazing-lands, on
which thousands of cattle and sheep will be raised
as cheaply as in any other quarter of the globe,
and this grass is so nutritious that the cattle raised

96 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

upon it cannot be surpassed in their weight and
quality. Snow rarely falls to sufficient depth to
interfere seriously with their grazing all through
the winter. Such may be taken as a general view
upon this important point, respecting a Territory
nearly half as large as the State of Pennsylvania”
(p. 19).

Along the shores of Puget Sound, and on the
island of Vancouver, are extensive deposits of
bituminous coal, conveniently situated for the fu-
ture steam-marine of the Pacific. Large quanti-
ties are now shipped to San Francisco for the use
of the Pacific mail-steamers.

Not only in Washington, but up the coast of
British Columbia, the coal-deposits crop out in
numerous places.

An explorer on Simpson River, which next to
the Fraser is the largest in British Columbia, thus
writes to Governor Douglas: “I saw seams of coal
to-day fifteen feet thick, better than any mined at
Vancouver” (Parliamentary Blue-Book.)

Coal in Montana, in Idaho, in Washington, on
Vancouver, in British Columbia; coal on the
Missouri, the Yellowstone, the Columbia, the
Fraser; coal on Simpson River, coal in Alaska!
Measureless forests all over the Pacific slope!
timber enough for all the world, masts and spars
sufficient for the mercantile marine of every nation !
Great rivers, thousands of waterfalls, unequalled

THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST. 97

facilities for manufacturing! An agricultural re-
gion unsurpassed for fertility! Exhaustless min-
eral wealth! Fisheries equalling those of New-
foundland,— salmon in every stream, cod and
herring abounding along the coast! Nothing
wanting for a varied industry.

Unfold the map of North America and look at
its western coast. From Panama northward there
is no harbor that can ever be available to the com-
merce of the Pacific till we reach the Bay of San
Francisco. From thence northward to the Cclum-
bia the waves of the sea break against rugged
mountains. The Columbia pours its waters through
the Coast Range, but a bar at its mouth has prac-
tically closed it to commerce. Not till we reach
Puget Sound do we find a good harbor. North of
that magnificent gateway are numberless bays and
inlets. Like the coast of Maine, there is a harbor
every five or ten miles, where ships may ride in
safety, sheltered from storms, and open at all sea-
sons of the year. There never will be any ice-
bound ships on the coast of British Columbia, for
the warm breath of the tropics is felt there through-
out the year.

While the map is unfolded, look at Puget Sound,
and think of its connection with Japan and China.
Latitude and longitude are to be taken into ac-,
count when we make long journeys. Liverpool is
between the 53d and 54th parallels, or about two

5 G

98 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

hundred and sixty miles farther north than Puget
Sound, where a degree of longitude is only
thirty-five miles in length. Puget Sound is on the
49th parallel, where the degrees are thirty-eight
and a half miles in length. San Francisco is near
the 37th parallel, where the degrees are nearly
forty-nine miles in length. Liverpool is three de-
grees west of Greenwich, from which longitude is
reckoned. The 122d meridian passes through Pu-
get Sound and also through the Bay of San Fran-
cisco. It follows from all this that the distance
from Liverpool in straight lines to these two mag-
nificent gateways of the Pacific, in geographical
miles, is as follows :—

Liverpool to San Francisco . 4,879 miles.
ee “ Puget Sound. . 4,487 “

Difference, 392%
Looking across the Pacific we see that Yoko-
hama is on the 35th parallel, where a degree of
longitude is forty-nine miles in length, Reckon-
ing the distance across the Pacific between Yoko-
hama and the western gateways of the continent,
we have this comparison :—

San Francisco to Yokohama . 4,856 miles.
Puget Sound “ es 4 Byaue: oS

Difference, 562 *%

Adding these differences together, we see that lon-

THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST. 99

citude alone makes a total of nine hundred and
fifty-four miles in favor of Puget Sound between
Liverpool and Yokohama. When the Northern
Pacific Railroad is completed, Chicago will be fully
six hundred miles nearer Asia by Puget Sound
than by San Francisco.

Vessels sailing from Japan to San Francisco
follow the Kuro-Siwo, the heated river, which
of itself bears them towards Puget Sound at the
rate of eighty miles a day. They follow it into
northern latitudes till within three or four hun-
dred miles of the coast of British Columbia, then
shape their course southward past Puget Sound to
the Golden Gate.

In navigation, then, Asia is nearly, if not quite,
one thousand miles nearer the ports of Puget
Sound than San Francisco. The time will come
when not only Puget Sound, but every bay and
inlet of the northwest coast, wills be whitened
with sails of vessels bringing the products of the
Orient, not only for those who dwell upon the
Pacific slope, but for the mighty multitude of the
Empire of the Northwest, of the Mississippi Val-
ley, and the Atlantic States.

From those land-locked harbors steamships
shall depart for other climes, freighted with the
products of this region, spun and woven, ham-
mered and smelted, sawed and planed, by the
millions of industrious workers who are to im-

100 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

prove the unparalleled capabilities of this vast
domain.

There is not on the face of the globe a country
so richly endowed as this of the Northwest. Here
we find every element necessary for the develop-
ment of a varied industry, — agricultural, mining,
manufacturing, mercantile, and commercial, -— all
this with a climate like that of southern I'rance,
or central and northern Europe.

“The climate,” says Mr. Roberts, “of this fa-
vored region is very remarkable, and will always
remain an attractive feature; which must, there-
fore, aid greatly in the speedy settlement of this
portion of the Pacific coast. Even in the cold-
est winters there is practically no obstruction
to navigation from ice ; vessels can enter and
depart at all times; and the winters are so
mild that summer flowers which in the latitude
of Philadelphia, on the Atlantic coast, we are
obliged to place in the hot-house, are left out in the
open garden without being injured. The cause of
this mildness is usually, and I think correctly,
ascribed to the warm-water equatorial current,
which, impinging against the Pacific coast, north
of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, passes along nearly
paraliel with the shore, diffusing its genial warmth
over the land far into the interior. Of the fact
there is no doubt, whatever may be the cause”
(Report, p. 14).

THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST. 101

The climate of eastern Washington, amid the
mountains, corresponds with that of Pennsylvania ;
but upon the sea-coast and along the waters of
Puget Sound roses blossom in the open air through-
out tle year, and the residents gather green peas
and strawberries in March and April.

In a former view we looked at the territory be-
longing to Great Britain lying east of the Rocky
Mountains, we saw its capabilities for settlement ;
but far different in its physical features is British
Columbia from the Saskatchawan country. It is
a land of mountains, plains, valleys, and forests,
threaded by rivers, and indented by bays and inlets.
The main branch of the Columbia rises in the Brit-
ish Possessions, between the Cascade Range and
the Rocky Mountains. There is a great amphi-
theatre between those two ranges, having an area
of forty-five thousand square miles. We hardly
comprehend, even with a map spread out before
us, that there is an area larger than Ohio in the
basin drained by the northern branch of the Colum-
bia. But such is the fact, and it is represented
as being a fertile and attractive section, possessed
of a mild and equable climate. The stock-raisers
of southern Idaho drive their cattle by the ten
thousand into British Columbia to find winter pas-
turage !

The general characteristics of that area have been
fully set forth in a paper read before the Royal

102 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE,

Geographical Society of London by Lieutenant
Palmer of the Royal Engineers. He says :—

“The scenery of the whole midland belt, espe-
cially of that portion of it lying to the east of the
124th meridian, is exceedingly beautiful and pic-
turesque. The highest uplands are all more or less
thickly timbered, but the valleys present a delight-
ful panorama of woodland and prairie, flanked
by miles of rolling hills, swelling gently from the
margin of streams, and picturesquely dotted with
yellow pines. The forests are almost entirely free
from underwood, and with the exception of a few
worthless tracts, the whole face of the country —
hill and dale, woodland and plain— is covered with
an abundant growth of grass, possessing nutritious
qualities of the highest order. Hence its value to
the colony as a grazing district is of the highest
importance. Cattle and horses are found to thrive
wonderfully on the ‘bunch’ grass, and to keep
in excellent condition at all seasons. The whole
area is more or less available for grazing purposes.

/ Thus the natural pastures of the middle belt may
be estimated at hundreds, or even thousands, of
square miles.

“ Notwithstanding the elevation, the sea. ons ex-
hibit no remarkable extremes of temperature ; the
winters, though sharp enough for all the rivers and
lakes to freeze, are calm and clear, so that the cold,
even when most severe, is not keenly felt. Snow

THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST. 103

seldom exceeds eighteen inches in depth, and in
many valleys of moderate elevation cattle often
range at large during the winter months, without
requiring shelter or any food but the natural
grasses. .... Judging from present experience,
there can be no duubt that in point of salubrity
the climate of British Columbia excels that of
Great Britain, and is indeed one of the finest in
the world.”

In regard to the agricultural capabilities of this
mountain region, the same author remarks : —

“Here in sheltered and well-irrigated valleys, at
altitudes of as much as 2,500 feet above the sea, a
few farming experiments have been made, and the
results have thus far been beyond measure envour-
aging. At farms in the San José and Beaver val-
leys, situated nearly 2,200 feet above the sea, and
again at Fort Alexander, at an altitude of 1,450
feet, wheat has been found to produce nearly forty
bushels to the acre, and other grain and vegetable
crops in proportion. .... It may be asserted that
two thirds at least of this eastern division of the
central belt may, when occasion arrives, be turned
to good account either for purposes of grazing or
tillage.”

Probably there are no streams, bays, or inlets in
the world that so abound with fish as the salt and
fresh waters of the northwest Pacific. The cod
and herring fisheries are equal to those of New-

104 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE,

foundland, while every stream descending from the
mountains literally swarms with salmon.

In regard to the fisheries of British Columbia,
Lieutenant Palmer says :—

“The whole of the inlets, bays, rivers, and lakes
of British Columbia abound with delicious fish.
The quantity of salmon that ascend the Fraser and
other rivers on the coast seems incredible. They
first enter Fraser and other rivers in March, and
are followed in rapid succession by other varieties,
which continue to arrive until the approach of
winter; but the great runs occur in July, August,
and September. During these months so abundant
is the supply that it may be asserted without ex-
aggeration, that some of the smaller streams can
hardly be forded without stepping upon them.”
(Journal of the Geographical Society.)

Ah! would n’t it be glorious sport to pull out
the twenty-five-pounders from the foaming waters
of the Columbia, — to land them, one after another,
on the grassy bank, and see the changing light
upon their shining scales! and then sitting down
to dinner to have one of the biggest on a platter,
delicately baked or boiled, with prairie chicken,
plover, pigeon, and wild duck! We will have it
by and by, when Governor Smith and Judge Rice,
who are out here seeing about the,railroad, get the
cars running to the Pacific; they will supply all
creation east of the Rocky Mountains with salmon !

THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST. 105

There are not iaany of us who can afford to dine
off salmon when it is a dollar a pound, and the
larger part of the crowd can never have a taste
even; but these railroad gentlemen will bring.
about a new order of things. When they get the
locomotive on the completed track, and make the
run from the Columbia to Chicago in about sixty
hours, as they will be able to do, all hands of us
who work for our daily bread will be able to have
fresh salmon at cheap rates.

What a country! I have drawn a hypothetical
line from Milwaukie to the Pacific, — not that the
region south of it— Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, or
California — does not abound in natural resour-
ces, With fruitful soil and vast capabilities, but be-
cause the configuration of the continent — the
water-systems, the mountain-ranges, the eleva-
tions and depressions, the soil and climate —is
in many respects different north of the 43d par-
allel from what it is south of it. We need not look
upon the territory now held by Great Britain with
a covetous eye. The 49th parallel is an imaginary
line running across the prairies, an arbitrary polit-
ical boundary which Nature will not take into
account in her disposition of affairs in the future.
Sooner or later the line will fade away. Railway
trains—the constant passing and repassing of a
multitude of people speaking the same language,

having ideas in common, and related by blood —
5%

106 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

will rub it out, and there will be one country, one
people, one government. What an empire then!
The region west of Lake Michigan and north of
the latitude of Milwaukie — the 43d parallel ex-
tended to the Pacific — will give to the nation, to
say nothing of Alaska Territory, forty States as
large as Ohio, or two hundred States of the size
of Massachusetts!

I have been accustomed to look upon this part
of the world as being so far north, so cold, so
snowy, so distant, — and all the other imaginary
so’s, — that it never could be available for settle-
ment ; but the facts show that it is as capable of
settlement as New York or New England, — that
the country along the Athabasca has a climate no
more severe than that of northern New Hamp-
_ shire or Maine, while the summers are more favor-
able to the growing of grains than those of the
\ northern Atlantic coast.

It is not, therefore, hypothetical geography. Fol-
lowing the 43d parallel eastward, we find it passing
along the northern shore of the Mediterranean,
through central Italy, and through the heart of
the Turkish Empire. Nearly all of Europe lies
north of it, — the whole of France, half of Italy,
the whole of the Austrian ae ai and all of
Russia’s vast dominions.

The entire wheat-field of Europe is above that
paraliel. The valleys of the Alps lying between

THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST. 107

the 46th and 50th parallels swarm with an in-
dustrious people ; why may not those of the Rocky
Mountains at the head-waters of the Missouri and
Columbia in like manner be hives of industry in
the future ?

If a Christiania, a Stockholm, and a St. Peters-
burg, with golden-domed churches, gorgeous pal-
aces, and abodes of comfort, can be built up in
lat. 60 in the Old World, why may we not ex-
pect to see their counterpart in the New, when
we take into account the fact that a heated cur-
rent from the tropics gives the same mildness of
climate to the northwestern section of this conti-
nent that the Gulf Stream gives to northern Eu-
rope ?

With this outlook towards future possibilities,
we see Minnesota the central State of the Conti-
nental Republic of the future.

With the map of the continent before me, I
stick a pin into Minneapolis, and stretch a string
to Halifax, then, sweeping southward, find that _
it cuts through southern Florida, and central
Mexico. It reaches almost to San Dieyo, the ex-
treme southwestern boundary of the United States,
—reaches to Donner Pass on the summit of the
Sierra Nevadas, within a hundred miles of Sac-
ramento. Stretching it due west, it reaches to
Salem, Orevon. Carrying it northwest, I find that*
it reaches to the Rocky Mountain House on Peace

108 ; THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

River,—to that region whose beauty charmed
Mackenzie and Father De Smet. The Peace River
flows through the Rocky Mountains, and at its
head-waters we find the lowest pass of the conti-
nent. The time may come when we of the East
will whirl through it upon the express-train bound
for Sitka! It is two hundred miles from the Rocky
Mountain House to that port of southern Alaska.

The city of Mexico is nearer Minneapolis by
nearly a hundred miles than Sitka. Trinity Bay
on the eastern coast of Newfoundland, Puerto
Principe on the island of Cuba, the Bay of Hon-
duras in Central America, and Sitka, are equidis-
tant from Minneapolis and St. Paul.

When Mr. Seward, in 1860, addressed the people
of St. Paul from the steps of the Capitol, it was
the seer, and not the politician, who said : —

“TI now believe that the ultimate last seat of gov-
ernment on this great continent will be fownd some-
where within a circle or radius not far from the
spot on which I stand, at the head of navigation on
the Mississippi River !”

THE FRONTIER. 109

CHAPTER V.
THE FRONTIER.

OTTINEAU is our guide. Take a look at
him as he sits by the camp-fire cleaning

his rifle. He is tall and well formed, with features
which show both his French and Indian parent-
age. He has dark whiskers, a broad, flat nose, a
wrinkled forehead, and is in the full prime of life.
His name is known throughout the Northwest, —
among Americans, Canadians, and Indians. The
Chippewa is his mother-tongue, though he can
speak several Indian dialects, and is fluent in
French and English. He was born not far from
Fort Garry, and has traversed the vast region of
the Northwest in every direction. He was Gover-
nor Stevens’s guide when he made the first explora-
tions for the Northern Pacific Railrvad, and has
guided a great many government trains to the
forts on the Missouri since then. He was with
General Sully in his campaign against the Indians.
He has the instinct of locality. Like the honey-
bee, which flies straight from the flower to its hive,
over fields, through forests, across ravines or inter-
vening hills, so Pierre Bottineau knows just where
to go when out upon the boundless prairie with

110 ; THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

no landmark to guide him. He is never lost, even
in the darkest night or foggiest day.

There is no man living, probably, who has
more enemies than he, for the whole Sioux nation
of Indians are his sworn foes. They would take
his scalp instantly if they could only get a chance.
He has been in many fights with them, — has
killed six of them, has had narrow escapes, and
to hear him tell of his adventures makes your
hair stand on end. He is going to conduct a por-
tion of our party through the Sioux country. The
Indians «re friendly now, and the party will not
be troubled ; but if a Sioux buffalo-hunter comes
across this guide there will be quick shooting on
both sides, and ten to one the Indian will go down,
—for Bottineau is keen-sighted, has a steady
hand, and is quick to act.

The westward-bound members of our party,
guided by Bottineau, will be accompanied by an
escort consisting of nineteen soldiers commanded
by Lieutenant Kelton. Four Indian scouts, mount-
ed on ponies, are engaged to scour the country in
advance, and give timely notice of the presence of
Sioux, who are always on the alert to steal horses
or plunder a train.

Bidding our friends good by, we watch their
train winding over the prairie till we can only see
the white canvas of the wagons on the edge of the
horizon ; then, turning eastward, we cross the river

THE FRONTIER. 111

into Minnesota, and strike out upon the pathless
plain. We see no landmarks ahead, and, like navi-
gators upon the ocean, pursue our way over this
sea of verdure by the compass.

After a few hours’ ride, we catch, through the
glimmering haze, the faint outlines of islands ris-
ing above the unruffled waters of a distant lake.
We approach its shores, but only to see islands
and lake alike vanish into thin air. It was the
mirage lifting above the horizon the far-off groves
of Buffalo Creek, a branch of the Red River.

Far away to the east are the Leaf Hills, which
are only the elevations of the rolling prairie that
forms the divide between the waters flowing into
the Gulf of Mexico and into Hudson Bay.

Wishing to see the hills, to ascertain what ob-
stacles there are to the construction of a railroad,
two of us break away from the main party and
strike out over the plains, promising to be in
camp at nightfall. How exhilarating to gallop
over the pathless expanse, amid a sea of flowers,
plunging now and then through grass so high that
horse and rider are almost lost to sight! The
meadow-lark greets us with his cheerful song ; the
plover hovers around us; sand-hill cranes, flying
always in pairs, rise from the ground and wing
their way beyond the reach of harm. The gophers
chatter like children amid the flowers, as we ride
over their subterranean towns.

112 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

They are in peaceful possession of the solitude.
Five years ago buffaloes were roaming here. We
see their bones bleaching in the sun. Here the
Sioux and Chippewas hunted them down. Here
the old bulls fought out their battles, and the
countless herds cropped the succulent grasses and
drank the clear running water of the stream which
bears their name. They are gone forever. The ox
and cow of the farm are coming to take their place.
Sheep and horses will soon fatten on the rich pas-
turage of these hills. We of the East would hardly
call them hills, much less mountains, the slopes
are so gentle and the altitudes so low.. The high-
est grade of a railroad would not exceed thirty
feet to the mile in crossing them.

Here we find granite and limestone bowlders,
and in some places beds of gravel, brought, so
the geologists inform us, from the far North and
deposited here when the primeval ocean currents
sot southward over this then submerged region.
They are in the right place for the railroad. The
stone will be needed for abutments to bridges,
and the gravel will be wanted for ballast, — pro-
vided the road is located in this vicinity.

On our second day’s march we come to what
might with propriety be called the park region of
Minnesota. It lies amid the high lands of the
divide. It is more beautiful even than the coun-
try around White Bear Lake and in the vicinity

THE FRONTIER, 113

of Glenwood. Throughout the day we behold
such rural scenery as can only be found amid the
most lovely spots in Englanu.

Think of rounded hills, with green slopes, — of
parks and countless lakes, —skirted by forests,
fringed with rushes, perfumed by tiger-lilies — the
waves rippling on gravelled beaches; wild geese,
ducks, loons, pelicans, and innumerable water-fowl
building their nests amid the reeds and rushes, —
think of lawns blooming with flowers, elk and deer
browsing in the verdant meadows. This is their
haunt. We see their tracks along the sandy shores,
but they keep beyond the range of our rifles.

So wonderfully has nature adorned this section,
that it seems as if we were riding through a coun-
try that has been long under cultivation, and that
behind yonder hillock we shall find an old castle,
a mansion, or, at least, a farm-house, as we find
them in Great Britain.

I do not forget that I am seeing Minnesota at
its best season, that it is midsummer, that the win-
ters are as long as in New England; but I can say
without reservation, that nowhere in the wide world
—not even in old England, the most finished of
all lands; not in la belle France, or sunny Italy, or
in the valley of the Ganges or the Yangtse, or on
the slopes of the Sierra Nevadas — have I beheld
anything approaching this in natural beauty.

How it would look in winter I cannot say, but
H

114 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

the members of our party are unanimous in their
praises of this portion of Minnesota. The nearest
pioneer is forty miles distant; but land so in-
viting will soon be taken up by settlers.

It was a pleasure, after three days’ travel over
the trackless wild, to come suddenly and unex-
pectedly upon a hay-field. There were the swaths
newly mown. There was no farm-house in sight,
no fenced area or upturned furrow, but the hay-
makers had been there. We were approaching
civilization once more. Ascending a hill, we came
in sight of a settler, a pioneer who is always on
the move; who, when a neighbor comes within
six or eight miles of him, abandons his home and
moves on to some spot where he can have more
elbow-room, — to a region not so thickly peopled.

He informed us that we should find the old
trail we were searching for about a mile ahead.
He had long matted hair, beard hanging upon his
breast, a wrinkled countenance, wore a slouched
felt hat, an old checked-cotton shirt, and panta-
loons so patched and darned, so variegated in color,
that it would require much study to determine
what was original texture and what patch and
darn. He came from Ohio in his youth, and has
always been a skirmisher on the advancing line of
civilization, —a few miles ahead of the main body.
He was thinking now of going into the “ bush,” as
he phrased it.

THE FRONTIER. 115

Settlers farther down the trail informed us that
he was a little flighty and queer; that he could
not be induced to stay long in one place, but was
always on the move for a more quiet neighborhood!

The road that we reached at this point was for-
merly traversed by the French and Indian traders
between Pembina and the Mississippi, but has not
been used much of late years. Striking that, we
should have no difficulty in reaching the settle-
ments of the Otter-Tail, forty miles south.

Emigration travels fast. As fires blown by
winds sweep through the dried grass of the prai-
ries, sO civilization spreads along the frontier.

We reached the settlement on Saturday night,
and pitched our tents for the Sabbath. It was a
rare treat to these people to come into our camp
and hear a sermon from Rev. Dr. Lord. The oldest
member of the colony is. a woman, now in her eigh-
tieth year, with eye undimmed anu a countenance
remarkably free from the marks of age, who walks
with a firm step after fourscore years of labor.
Sixty years ago she moved from Lebanon, New
Hampshire, a young wife, leaving the valley of the
Connecticut for a home in the State of New York,
then moving with the great army of emigrants to
Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa in succession,
and now beginning again in Minnesota. Last year
her hair, which had been as white as the purest
snow, began to take on its original color, and is

116 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

now quite dark! There are but few instances on
record of such a renewal of youth.

The party have come from central Iowa to make
this their future home, preferring the climate of
this region, where the changes of temperature are
not so sudden and variable. The women and chil-
dren of the four families lived here alone for six
weeks, while the men were away after their stock.
Their nearest neighbors are twelve miles distant.
On the 4th of July all hands — men, women, and
children — travelled forty-five miles to celebrate
the day.

“We felt,” said one of the women, “that we
could n't get through the year without going some-
where or seeing somebody. It is kinder lonely so
far away from folks, and so we went down country
to a picnic.”

Store, church, and school are all forty miles
away, and till recently the nearest saw-mill was
sixty miles distant. Now they can get their
wheat ground by going forty miles.

The settlement is already blooming with half a
dozen children. Other emigrants are coming, and
these people are loo. ig forward to next year
with hope and confidence, for then they will have
a school of their own.

In our march south. from Detroit Lake we meet
a large number of Chippewa Indians going to the
Reservation recently assigned them by the govern-

THE FRONTIER. 117

ment in one of the fairest sections of Minnesota.
Among them we see several women with blue
eyes and light hair and fair complexions, who
have French blood in their veins, and possibly
some of them may have had American fathers.
Nearly all of the Indians wear pantaloons and
jackets; but here and there we see a brave who
is true to his ancestry, who is proud of his lineage
and race, and is in all respects a savage, in mocca-
sons, blanket, skunk-skin head-dress, and painted
eagle’s feathers.

They are friendly, inoffensive, and indolent, and
took no part in the late war. They have been in
close contact with the whites for a long time, but
they do not advance in civilization. All efforts
for their elevation are like rain-drops falling on a
cabbage-leaf, that roll off and leave it dry. There
is little absorption on the part of the Indians ex-
cept of whiskey, and in that respect their powers
are great, — equal to those of the driest toper in
Boston or anywhere else devoting all his energies
to getting round the Prohibitory Law.

Our halting-place for Monday night is on the
bank of the Otter-Tail, near Rush Lake. The
tents are pitched, the camp-fire kindled, supper
eaten, an’ we are sitting before a pile of blazing
logs. The w is falling, and the fire is comfort-
able and socivl. We look into the glowing coals
and think of old times, and of friends far away.

118 ; THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

We dream of home. Then the jest and the story .
go round. The song would follow if we had the
singers. But music is not wanting. We hear
martial strains,—of cornets, trombones, ophi-
cleides, and horns, and t'1e beating of a drum.
Torches gleam upon the horizon, and by their
flickering light we see a band advancing over the
prairie. It is a march of welcome to the Northern
Pacific Exploring Party.

Not an hour ago these musicians heard of our
arrival, and here they are, twelve of them, in our
camp, doing their best to express their joy. They
are Germans,—all young men. Three years ago
several families came here from Ohio. They re-
ported the soil so fertile, the situation so attrac-
tive, the prospects so flattering, that others came;
and now they have a dozen families, and more are
coming to this land of promise.

Take a good long look at these men as they
stand before our camp-fire, with their bright new
instruments in their hands. They received them
only three weeks ago from Cincinnati.

“ We can’t play much yet,” says the leader, Mr.
Bertenheimer, “ but we do the best we can. We
have sent to Toledo for a teacher who will spend
the winter with us. You will pardon our poor
playing, but we felt so good when we heard you
were here looking out a route for a railroad, that
we felt like doing something to show our good-

®

THE FRONTIER. 119.

will, You see we are just getting started, and
have to work hard, but we wanted some recreation,
and we concluded to get up a band. We thought
it would be better than to be hanging round a
erocery. We haven't any grocery yet, and if we
keep sober, and give our attention to other things,
perhaps we sha’ n’t have one,— which, I reckon,
will be all the better for us.”

Plain and simple the words, but there is more
in them than in many a windy speech made on
the rostrum or in legislative halls. Just getting
started! Yet here upon the frontier Art has
planted herself. The flowers of civilization are
blooming on the border.

As we listen to the parting strains, and watch
the receding forms, and look into the coals of our
camp-fire after their departure; we feel that there
must be a bright future for a commonwealth that
can grow such fruit on the borders of the uncul-
tivated wilderness.

Now just ride out and see what has been done
by these emigrants. Here is a field containing
thirty acres of as fine wheat as grows in Minne-
sota. It is just taking on the golden hue, and will
be ready for the reaper next week. Beside it are
twenty acres of oats, several acres of corn, an acre
or two of potatoes. This is one farm only. On
yonder slope there stands a two-storied house, of
hewn logs and shingled roof. See what adornment

120 — THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

the wife or daughter has given to the front yard,
— verbenas, petunias, and nasturtiums, and round
the door a living wreath of morning-glories.

Cews chew their cud in the stable-yard, while

‘¢ Drowsy tinklings lull the distant field ”
where the sheep are herded.

We shall find the scene repeated on the adjoin-
ing farm. Sheltered beneath the grand old forest-
trees stands the little log church with a cross upon
its roof, and here we see coming down the road
the venerable father and teacher of the commu-
nity, in long black gown and broad-brimmed hat,
with a crucifix at his girdle. It is a Catholic
community, and they brought their priest with
them.

In the morning we ride over smiling prairies,
through groves of oak and maple, and behold in
the distance a large territory covered with the
lithe foliage of the tamarack. Here and there are
groves of pine rising like islands above the wide
level of the forest.

At times our horses walk on pebbly beaches and °
splash their hoofs in the lmpid waters of the
lakes. We pick up agates, carnelians, and bits of
bright red porphyry, washed and worn by the
waves. Wild swans rear their young in the reeds
and marshes bordering the streams. They grace-
fully glide over the still waters. They ara beyond
the reach of our rifles, and we would not harm

THE FRONTIER. 121

them if we could. There is a good deal of the
savage left in a man who, under the plea of
sport, con wound or kill a harmless bird or beast
that cannot be made to serve his wants. It gives
me plersure to say that our party are not blood-
thirsty. Ducks, plover, snipe, wild geese, and
sand-hill cranes are served at our table, but they
are never shot in wanton spot.

The stream which we have crossed several times
is the Otter-Tail and flows southward into Otter-
Tail Lake; issuing from that it runs southwest,
then west, then northward, taking the name of the
Red River, and pours its waters into Lake Winni-
peg. from that great northern reservoir the wa-
ters of this western region of Minnesota reach
Hudson Bay through Nelson River.

Looking eastward we see gleaming in the morn-
ing sunlight the Leaf Lakes, the head-waters of
the Crow-Wing, one of the largest western tribu-
taries of the Upper Mississippi.

The neck of land between these lakes and the
Otter-Tail is only one mile wide. Here, from time
out of mind among the Indians, the transit has
been. made between the waters flowing into the
Gulf of Mexico and into Hudson Bay. When
the Jesuit missionaries came here, they found it
the great Indian carrying-place.

Mackenzie, Lord Selkirk, and all the early ad-

veunturers, came by this route on their way to Brit-
6

122 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

ish America. For a long time it has been a trad-
ing-post. The French Jesuit fathers were here a
century ago and are here to-day,—not spiritual
fathers alone, but according to the flesh as well!
The settlement is composed wholly of French Ca-
nadians, their Indian wives and copper-colored
children. There are ten or a dozen houses, but they
are very dilapidated. A little old man with twink-
ling gray eyes, wearing a battered white hat, comes
out to welcome us, while crowds of swarthy chil-
dren and Indian women gaze at us from the door-
ways. Another little old man, in a black gown
and broad-brimmed hat, with a long chain and
crucifix dangling from his girdle, salutes us with
true French politeness. He is the priest, and is as
seedy as the village itself.

Around the place are several birch-bark Ind-
ian huts, and a few lodges of tanned buffalo-hides.
Filth, squalor, and degradation are the charac-
teristics of the lodge, and the civilization of the
log-houses is but little removed from that of the
wigwams.

The French Canadian takes about as readiiy to
the Indian maiden as to one of his own race. He
is kinder than the Indian brave, and when he
wants a wife he will find the fairest of the maidens
ready to listen to his words of love.

ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE, 123

CHAPTER VI.
ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE.

ute halting-place at noon furnishes a pleasing
subject for a comic artist. Behold us be-
neath the shade of old oaks, our horses cropping
the rank grass, a fire kindled against the trunk of
a tree that has braved the storms of centuries, each
toasting a slice of salt pork.

Governor, members of Congress, minister, judge,
doctor, teamster, correspondent, — all hands are at
it. Salt pork! Does any one turn up his nose at
it? Do you think it hard fare? Just come out
here and try it, after a twenty-five-mile gallop on
horseback, in this clear, bracing atmosphere, with
twenty more miles to make before getting into
camp. We slept in a tent last night; had break-
fast at 5 A.M.; are camping by night and tramp-
ing by day; are bronzed by the sun; and are
roughing it! The exercise of the day gives sweet
sleep at night. We had a good appetite at break-
fast, and now, at noon, are as hungry as _ bears.
Salt pork is not of much account in a down-town
eating-house, but out here it is epicurean fare.

Just see the Ex-Governor of the Green Mountain
State standing before the fire with a long stick in

124 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

his hand, having three prongs like Neptune’s trident.
He is doing his pork to a beautiful brown. Now
he lays it between two slices of bread, and eats it
as if it were a most delicious morsel, —as it is.

A dozen toasting-forks are held up to the glow-
ing coals. A dozen slices of pork are sizzling.
We are not all of us quite so scientific in our toast-
ing as the Ex-Governor in his.

Although I have had camp-life before, and have
fried flapjacks on an old iron shovel, I am subject
to mishaps. There goes my pork into the ashes;
nevey mind! I shall need less pepper. I job my
trident into the slice, — flaming now, and turning to
crisp, — hold it a moment before the coals, and slap
it on my bread in season to save a little of the
drip.

Do I hear some one exclaim, How can he eat it ?
Ah! you who never have had experience on the
prairies don’t know the pleasures of such a lunch.

Now, because we are all as jolly as we can he,
because I have praised salt pork, I would n’t have
everybody rushing out here to try it, as they have
rushed to the Adirondacks, fired to a high pitch of
enthusiasm by the spirited descriptions of the
pleasures of the wilderness by the pastor of the
Boston Park Street Church. What is sweet to me
-may be sour to somebody else. I should not like
this manner of life all the time, nor salt pork for
a steady diet.

ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE. 125

Wooded prairies, oak openings, hills and vales,
watered by lakes and ponds, — such is the character
of the region lying south of Otter-Tail. Over all
this section the water is as pure as that gurgling
from the hillsides of New Hampshire.

Minnesota is one of the best-watered States of
the Union. The thousands of lakes and ponds
dotting its surface are fed by never-failing springs.
This one feature adds immeasurably to its value
as an agricultural State. In Illinois, Iowa, and
Nebraska the farmer is compelled to pump water
for his stock, and in those States we see windmills
erected for that purpose; but here the ponds are
so numerous and the springs so abundant that far
less pumping will be required than in the other
prairie States of the Union. ;

We fall in with a Dutchman, where we camp for
the night, who has taken up a hundred and sixty
acres under the Pre-emption Act. He has put up
a log-hut, turned a few acres of the sod, and is
getting ready to live. His thrifty wife has a flock
of hens, which supply us with fresh eggs. This
pioneer has recently come from Montana. He had
a beautiful farm in the Deer Lodge Pass of the
Rocky Mountains, within seven miles of the sum-
mit.
“T raised as good wheat there as I can here,”
he says, — “ thirty bushels to the acre.”

“Why did you leave it?”

126 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

“T could n't sell anything. There is no market
there. The farmers raise so much that they can
hardly give their grain away.”

“ Did you sell your farm ?”

“No, I left it. It is there for anybody to take.”

“Ts it cold there ?”

“No colder than it is here. We have a few cold
days in winter, but not much snow. Cattle live
in the fields through the winter, feeding on bunch-
grass, Which grows tall and is very sweet.”

Here was information worth having, — the ex-
perience of a farmer. The Deer Lodge Pass is at
the head-waters of the Missouri, in the main di-
vide of the Rocky Mountains, and one of the sur-
veyed lines of the Northern Pacific Railroad passes
through it. We have thought of it as a place
where a failroad train would be frozen up and
buried beneath descending avalanches ; but here is
a man who has lived within seven miles of the top
of the mountains, who raised the best of wheat,
the mealiest of potatoes, whose cattle lived in the
pastures through the winter, but who left his farm
for the sole reason that he could not sell any-
thing. Montara has no market except among the
mining population, and the miners are scattered
over a vast region. A few farmers in the vicinity
of a mining-camp supply the wants of the place.
Farming will not be remunerative till a railroad is
completed up the valley of the Yellowstone or

ONILSVOL

“MUOd

ay

Fy Eg Gy, Ss
A Ft

lj / f
al
iY jill)

ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE, 127

Missouri. What stronger argument can there be,
what demonstration more forcible, for the imme-
diate construction of the Northern Pacific Rail-
road? It will pass through the heart of the Ter-
ritory which is yielding more gold and silver than
any other Territory or State.

This farmer says that Montana is destined to be
a great stock-growing State. Cattle thrive on the
bunch-grass. The hills are covered with it, and
millions of acres that cannot be readily cultivated
will furnish pasturage for flocks and herds. This
testimony accords with statements made by those
who have visited the Territory, as well as by others
who have resided there.

We have met to-day a long train of wagons
filled with emigrants, who have come from Wis-
consin, Illinois, Indiana, and some from Ohio.

Look at the wagons, each drawn by four oxen, —
driven either by the owner or one of his barefoot
boys. Boxes, barrels, chairs, tables, pots, and pans
constitute the furniture. The grandmother, white-
raired, old, and wrinkled, and the wife with an
infant in her arms, with three or four romping
children around her, all sitting on a feather-bed
beneath the white canvas covering. A tin kettle
is suspended beneath the axle, in which a tow-
headed urchin, covered with dust, is swinging,
clapping his hands, and playing with a yellow
dog trotting behind the team. A hoop-skirt, a

128 ; THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

chicken-coop, a pig in a box, are the most conspic-
uous objects that meet the eye as we look at
the hinder part of the wagon. A barefooted boy,
as bright-eyed as Whittier’s ideal,— now done in
chromo-lithograph, and adorning many a home, —
marches behind, with his rosy-cheeked sister, driv-

ing a cow and a calf. |

To-night they will be fifteen miles nearer their
destination than they were in the morning. Some
of the teams have been two months on the road,
and a few more days will bring them to the spot
which the emigrant has already selected for his
future home. They halt by the roadside at night.
The oxen crop the rich grasses ; the cow supplies the
little ones with milk; the children gather an arm-
ful of sticks, the mother makes a cake, and bakes
it before the camp-fire in a tin baker such as was
found in every New England home forty years ago;
the emigrant smokes his pipe, rolls himself in a
blanket, and snores upon the ground beneath the
wagon, while his family sleep equally well beneath
the canvas roof above him. Another cake in the
morning, with a slice of fried pork, a drink of
coffee, and they are ready for the new day.

Not only along this road, but everywhere, we
may behold just such scenes. A grevt army of
occupation is moving into the State. The advance
is all along the line. Towns and villages are
springing up as if by magic in every county.

ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE, 129

Every day adds thousands of acres to those al-
ready under cultivation. The fields of this year are
wider than they were a year ago, and twelve months
hence will be much larger than they are to-day.

In all new countries, no matter how fertile they
may be, breadstuffs must be imported at the out-
set. It was so when California was first settled ;
but to-day California is sending her wheat all over
the world, The first settlers of Minnesota were
lumbermen, and up to 1857 there was not wheat
enough produced in the State to supply their
wants. The steamers ascending the Mississippi
to St. Paul were loaded with flour, and the world
at large somehow came to think of Minnesota as
being so cold that wheat enough to supply the few
lumbermen employed in the forests and on the
rivers could never be raised there.

See how this region, which we all thought of as
lying too near the north pole to be worth any-
thing, has developed its resources! In 1854 the
number of acres under cultivation in the State
was only fifteen thousand, or about two thirds of
a single township.

Fifteen years have passed by, and the tilled area
is estimated at about two million acres! In 1857
she imported grain; but her yield of wheat the
present year is estimated at more than twenty mil-
lion bushels !

I would not make the farmers of New England
6* I

130 ; THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

discontented. I would not advise all to put up
their farms at auction, or any well-to-do farmer
of Massachusetts or Vermont to leave his old
home and rush out here without first coming to
survey the country; but if I were a young man
selling corsets and hoop-skirts to simpering young
ladies in a city store, I would give such a jump
over the counter that my feet would touch ground
in the centre of a great prairie!

I would have a homestead out here. True, there
would be hard fare at first. The cabin-would be
of logs. There would be short commons for a year
or two. But with my salt pork I would have
pickerel, prairie chickens, moose, and deer. I
should have calloused hands and the back-ache at
times; but my sleep would be swect. I should
have no theatre to visit nightly, no star actors to
see, and should miss the tramp of the great multi-
tude of the city, — the ever-hurrying throng. The
first year might be lonely ; possibly, I should have
the blues now and then; but, possessing my soul
with patience a twelvemonth, I should have neigh-
bors. The railroad would come. The little log-
hut would give place toa mansion. Roses would
bloom in the garden, and morning-glories open
their blue bells by the doorway. The vast ex-
panse would wave with golden grain. Thrift and
plenty, and civilization with all its comforts and
luxuries, would be mine.

ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE. 131

Are the colors of the picture too bright? Re-
member that in 1849 Minnesota had less than five
thousand inhabitants, and that to-day she has near-
ly five hundred thousand.

I am writing to young men who have the whole
scope of life before them. You are a clerk ina
store, with a salary of five hundred dollars, perhaps
seven hundred. By stinting here and there you
can just bring the year round. It is a long, long
look ahead, and your brightest day-dream of the
future is not very bright.

Now take a look in this direction. You can get
a hundred and sixty acres of land for two hun-
dred dollars. If you obtain it near a railroad, it
will cost three hundred and twenty dollars. It
will cost three dollars an acre to plough the ground
and prepare it for the first crop, besides the fen-
cing. But the first crop, ordinarily, will more than
pay the entire outlay for ground, fencing, and
ploughing. Five years hence the land will be
worth fifteen or twenty-five dollars per acre. This
is no fancy sketch. It is simply a statement as
to what has been the experience of thousands of
people in Minnesota.

Think of it, young men, you who are rubbing
along from year to year with no great hopes for
the future. Can you holda plough? Can you drive
a span of horses? Can you accept for a while
the solitude of nature, and have a few hard knocks

132 ; THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

for a year or two? Can you lay aside paper col-
lars and kid gloves, and wear a blue blouse and
blister your hands with work? Can you possess
your soul in patience, and hold on your way with
a firm purpose? If you can, there is a beautiful
home for you out here. Prosperity, freedom, inde-
pendence, manhood in its highest sense, peace of
mind, and all the comforts and luxuries of life,
are awaiting you.

There is no medicine for a wearied mind or
jaded body equal to life on tiie prairies. When
our party left the East, every member of it was
worn down by hard work. Some of us were dys-
peptic, some nervous, while others had tired brains.
It is the misfortune of Americans to be ever work-
ing as if they were in the iron-mills, or as if the
Philistines had them in the prison-house !

We have been a few weeks upon the frontier,
—been beyond the reach of the daily newspaper,
beyond care and trouble. The world has got on
without us, and now we are on our way back,
changed beings. We are as good as new, — tough,
rugged, hale, hearty, and ready for a frolic here,
or another battle with life when we reach home.

Behold us at our halting-place for the night ; a
clear stream near by winding through pleasant
meadows, bordered by oaks and maples. The
horses are unharnessed, and are rolling in the tall
grass after their long day’s work. The teamsters

ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE. 133

are pitching the tents, the cook is busy with his
pots and kettles. Already we inhale the aroma
steaming from the nose of the coffee-pot. The
pork and fish and plover over the fire, like a mis-
sionary or colporteur or Sunday-school teacher,
are doing good! What odor more refreshing than
that exhaled from a coffee-pot steaming over a
camp-fire, after twelve hours in the saddle, — the
fresh breeze fanning your cheeks, and every sense
intensified by beholding the far-reaching fields
blooming with flowers or waving with ripening
orain ?

The shadows of night are falling, and though the
sun has shone through a cloudless sky the evening
“air is chilly. We will warm it by kindling a
grand bivouac-fire, where, after supper, we will sit
in solemn council, or crack jokes, or tell stories, as
the whim of. the hour shall lead us.

There was a time when the gray-beards of our
party were youngsters and played “horse” with a
wooden bit between the teeth, the reins handled
by a white-haired schoolmate. How we trot-
ted, cantered, reared, pranced, backed, and then
rushed furiously on, making the little old hand-
cart rattle over the stones! It was long ago, but
we have not forgotten it, and to-night we will be
boys once more.

Yonder by the roadside lies a fallen oak, a mon-
arch of the forest, broken down by the wind, —

134 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

by the same tempest that levelled our tents. It
shall blaze to-night. We will sit in its cheerful
light. It would be ignoble to hack it to pieces and
bring it into camp an armful at a time ; we will
drag it bodily, lop off the limbs and pile them
high upon the trunk, touch a match to the with-
ered leaves, and warm the chilly air.

“ All hands to the harness!” It is a royal team.
How could it be otherwise with the Ex-Governor
of the Green Mountain State for leader, matched
with our Judge, who, for sixteen years, honored
the judiciary of Maine, with three members of
Congress past and present, a doctor of divinity
and another of medicine,—all in harness? We
have a strong cart-rope of the best Manilla hemp,
which has served us many a turn in pulling our
wagons through the sloughs, and which is brought
once more into service. A few strokes of the axe
provide us with levers which serve for yokes. We
pair off, two and two, and take our places in the
team.

“Are you all ready? Now forit!” It is the
voice of our leader.

“Gee up! Whoa! Whoa! Hip! Hurrah! Now
she goes !”

We shout and sing, and feel an ecstatic thrill
running all over us, from the tips of our fingers
down into our boots !

What a deal of power there isina yell! The

ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE, 135

teamster screams to his horses; the plough-boy
makes himself hoarse by shouting to his oxen ; the
fireman feels that he is doing good service when
he goes tearing down the street yelling with all
his might. He never would put out the fire if
he could n’t yell. A hurrah elected General Har-
rison President of the United States, and it has
won many a political battle-field. A hurrah starts
the old oak from its bed. See the Executive ag
he sets his compact shoulders to the work, mak-
ing the lever bend before him. Notice the tall
form of the Judge bowing in the traces! If the
rope does not break, the log is bound to come.

The two are good at pulling. They have shown
their power by dragging one of the greatest enter- -
prises of modern times over obstacles that would
have discouraged men of weaker nerve. The pub-
lic never will know of the hard work performed
by them in starting the Northern Pacific Railroad,
—how they have raised it from obscurity, from
obloquy, notwithstanding opposition and prejudice.
The time will come when the public will look
upon the enterprise in its true light. When the
road is opened from Lake Superior westward, when
the traveller finds on every hand a country of
surpassing richness, a climate in the Northwest as
mild as that of Pennsylvania, when he sees the
numberless attractions and exhaustless resources
of the land, then, and not till then, will the labors

136: THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

of Governor Smith and his associates in carrying
on this work be appreciated.

To-night they enter with all the zest of youth
into the project of building a camp-fire, and tug at
the rope with the enthusiasm of boyhood.

It is a strong team. Our doctor of divinity,
whether in the pulpit or on the prairie, pulls with
“a forty parson power,’ to use Byron’s simile.
And our M. D., whether he has hold of a gnarled
oak or the stump of a molar in the mouth of a
pretty young lady, is certain to master it.

A member of Congress “made believe pull,” as
we used to say in our boyhood, but complacently
smoked his pipe the while; the correspondent
tipped a wink at the smoker, seized hold of a
lever, shouted and yelled as if laying out all his
strength, and pulled — about two pounds! But
we dragged it in amid the hurrahs of the team-
sters, wiped the sweat from our brows, and then
through the evening sat round the blazing log, and
made the air ring with our merry laughter. So
we rubbed out the growing wrinkles, smoothed the
lines of care, and turned back the shadow creeping
up the dial.

AM.

TE

A STRONG

IN THE FOREST, 137

CHAPTER VII.
IN THE FOREST.

N preceding chapters the characteristics of the

country west of the Mississippi have been
set forth; but many a man seeking a new home
would be lonely upon the prairies. The lumber-
man of Maine, who was born in the forest, who
in childhood listened to the sweet but mournful
music of the ever-sighing pines, would be home-
sick away from the grand old woods. The trees
are his friends. The open country would be a soli-
tude, but in the depths of the forest he would ever
find congenial company. There the oaks, the elms,
and maples reach out their arms lovingly above
him, sheltering him alike from winter’s blasts and
summer’s heats. Even though he may have no
poetry in his soul, the woods will have a charm for
him, for there he finds a harvest already grown
and waiting to be gathered, as truly as if it were so
many acres of ripened wheat.

It is not difficult to pick out the “ Down-Easters”
in Minnesota. When I hear a man talk about
“stumpage ” and “ thousands of feet,” I know that
he is from the Moosehead region, or has been in
a lumber camp on the Chesuncook. He has eaten

138 Ct THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

pork and beans, and slept on hemlock boughs on
the banks of the Madawaska. When he cocks his
head on one side and squints up a pine-tree, I
know that he has Blodget’s Table in his brain, and
can tell the exact amount of clear and merchant-
able lumber which the tree will yield. His para-
dise is in the forest, and there alone.

The region east of the Mississippi and around
its head-waters is the Eden of lumbermen.

The traveller who starts from St. Paul and trav-
els westward will find a prairie country ; but if he
travels eastward, or toward the northeast, he will
find himself in the woods, where tall pines and
spruces and oaks and maples rear their gigantic
trunks. It is not all forest, for here and there we
see “openings” where the sunlight falls on pleas-
ant meadows; but speaking in general terms, the
entire country east of the Mississippi, in Minne-
sota and northern Wisconsin, and in that portion
of Michigan lying between Lake Superior and
Lake Michigan, is the place for the lumberman.

The soil is sandy, and the geologist will see
satisfactory traces of the drift period, when a
great flood of waters set southward, bringing gran-
ite bowlders, pebbles, and stones from the country
lying between Hudson Bay and Lake Superior.

The forest growth affects the climate. There is
more snow and rain east of the Mississippi than
west of it. The temperature in winter on Lake

IN THE FOREST. 139

Superior is milder than at St. Paul, but there is
more moisture in the air. The climate at Duluth
or Superior City during the winter does not vary
much from that of Chicago. Notwithstanding the
difference of latitude, the isothermal line of mean
temperature for the year runs from the lower end
of Lake Michigan to the western end of Lake
Superior. Probably* more snow falls in Minne-
sota than around Chicago, for in all forest re-
gions in northern latitudes there is usually a
heavier rain and snow fall than in open coun-
tries. The time will probably come when the
rain-fall of eastern Minnesota and northern Mich-
igan will be less than it is now. When the lum-
bermen have swept away the forests, the sun will
dry up the moisture, there will be less rain east
of the Mississippi, while the probabilities are
that it will be increased westward over all the
prairie region. Orchards, groves, corn - fields,
wheat-fields, clover-lands, — all will appear with
the advance of civilization. They will receive
more moisture from the surrounding air than the
prairie grasses do at the present time. Every-
body knows that the hand of man is powerful
enough to change climate, — to increase the rain-
fall here, to diminish it there; to lower the tem-
perature, or to raise it.

The Ohio River is dwindling in size because the
forests of Ohio end Pennsylvania are disappearing.

140 =. THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

Palestine, Syria, and Greece, although they have
supported dense populations, are barren to-day be-
cause the trees have been cut down. If this
were an essay on the power of man over nature,
instead of the writing out of a few notes on the
Northwest, I might go on and give abundant data;
but I allude to it incidentally in connection with
the climate, which fifty years hence will not in all
probability be the same that it is to-day.

Having in preceding pages taken a survey of the
magnificent farming region beyond the Mississippi,
it remains for us to take a look at the country
between the Mississippi and Lake Superior.

Leaving our camp equipage and the horses that
had borne us over the prairies, bidding good by to
our many friends in Minneapolis and St. Paul, we
started from the last-named city for a trip of a
hundred and fifty miles through the woods. The
first fifty miles was accomplished by rail, through
a country partially settled. Upon the train were
several ladies and gentlemen on their way to
White Bear’ Lake, not the White Bear of the
West, but a lovely sheet of water ten miles north
of St. Paul. It is but a few years since Wabashaw
and his dusky ancestors trolled their lines by day
and speared pickerel and pike by terchlight at
night upon its placid bosom, but now it is the
favorite resort of picnic-parties from St. Paul. Here
and there along the shores are low grass-grown

IN THE FOREST. 141

monuments, raised by the Chippewas when they
were a powerful nation among the Red Men.
‘But now the wheat is green and high
On clods that hid the warrior’s breast,

And scattered in the furrows lie
The weapons of his rest.”

The lake is six miles long and dotted with isl-
ands. It was a general gathering-place of the
Indians, as it is now of the people of the sur-
rounding country. Its curving shores and pebbly
beaches, bordered by a magnificent forest, present
a charming and peaceful picture.

We are accompanied on our trip by the Pres-
ident of the Lake Superior and Mississippi Rail-
road, and other gentlemen connected with the
railroads of the Northwest. At Wyoming we
leave our friends, bid good by to the locomotive,
and say how do you do to a bright new mud-
wagon! It is set on thorough- braces, with a
canvas top. There are seats for nine inside and
one with the driver outside. Carpet-bags and
valises are stowed under the seats. We have no
extra luggage, but are in light staging order.

We are bound for Superior and Duluth.

“You will have a sweet time getting there,” is
the remark of a mud-bespattered man sitting on
a pile of lumber by the roadside. He has just
come through on foot with a dozen men, who
have thrown down the shovel to take up the

°

142 - THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

sickle, or rather to follow the reaper during har-
vest.

What he means by our having a sweet time we
do not quite comprehend.

“You will find the road baddish in pois: ” says
another.

A German, with bushy beard and uncombed
hair, barefooted, and carrying his boots in his
hands, exclaims, “It ish von tam tirty travel all
the time !”

We understand him. With a crack of the whip
we roll away, our horses on the trot, passing
cleared fields, where cattle are up to their knees
in clover, past wheat-fields ready for the reaper,
reaching at noon our halting-place for dinner.

Whenever you find a farm-house anywhere out
West where there are delicious apple-pies, or any-
thing especially nice in the pastry line, on the
table, you may be pretty sure that the hostess
came from Maine; at least, such has been my expe-
rience. I remember calling at a house in central
Missouri during the war, and, instead of having the
standard dish of the Southwest “hog and hom-
iny,” obtaining a luxurious dinner, finishing off
with apple-pie, the pastry moulded by fair hands
that were trained to housework on the banks of
the Penobscot. Last year I found a lady from
Maine among the Sierra Nevadas; I was confi-
dent that she was from the Pine-Tree State the

IN THE FOREST. 143

moment I saw her pies; for somehow the daugh-
ters of Down East have the knack of making
pastry that would delight an epicure. And now
in Minnesota we sit down to a substantial dinner
topped off, rounded, and made complete by a
piece of Maine apple-pie.

The daughters of New Hampshire and of Ver-
mont may pessibly make just as good cooks, but
it has so happened that we have fallen in with
housewives from Maine when our appetite was
sharpened for something good.

Our dinner is at the house of a farmer who
came to Minnesota from the Kennebec. He knew
how to swing an axe, and the oaks and maples
have fallen before his sturdy strokes; the plough
and harrow and stump-puller have been at work,
and now we look out upon wheat-fields and acres
of waving corn, inhale the fragrance of white
clover, and hear the humming of the bees. We
see at a glance the capabilities of the forest region
of Minnesota. We understand it just as well as
if we were to read all the works extant on soil,
climatology, natural productions, etc. Here, as
well as westward of the Mississippi, wheat, corn,
potatoes, clover, and timothy can be successfully
and profitably cultivated.

“T raised thirty-five bushels of wheat to the acre
last. year, and I guess I shall have that this year,”
said the owner of the farm.

144 —° THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

This well-to-do farmer and his wife came here
without capital, or rather with capital arms and
strong hearts, to rear a home, and here it is: a
neat farm-house of two stories; a carpet on the
floor, a sofa, a rocking-chair, pictures on the walls;
a large barn; granary well filled, —a comfortable
home with a bright future before them.

When the timber has disappeared from eastern
Minnesota, the land will produce luxuriantly. The
country will not be settled quite as rapidly here as
west of the Mississippi; but it is not to be forever
a wilderness. The time will come when along
every stream there will be heard the buzzing of
saws, the whirring of mill-stones, and the click
and clatter of machinery. This vast area of tim-
ber will invite every kind of manufacturing, and
the same elements which have contributed so
largely to build up the Eastern States — the man-
ufacturing and industrial — will here aid in build-
ing up one of the strongest communities of our
future republic.

Clearings here and there, cabins by the road-
side, bark wigwams which have sheltered wander-
ing Ojibwas, and a reach of magnificent forest, are
the features of the country through which we ride
this glorious afternoon, with the sunlight glimmer-
ing among the trees, till suddenly we come upon
Chengwatona.

It is a small village on Snake River, with a

IN THE FOREST. 145

hotel, half a dozen houses, and a saw-mill where
pine logs are going up an incline from the pond at
one end, and coming out in the shape of bright
new lumber at the other.

The dam at Chengwatona has flooded an im-
mense area, and looking toward the descending sun
we behold a forest in decay. The trees are leafless,
and the dead trunks rising from the water, robbed
of all their beauty, present an indescribable scene
of desolation when contrasted with the luxuriance
of the living forest through which we have passed.

With a fresh team we move on, finding mud
“spots” now and then. We remember the re-
marks of the fellows at the railroad. We dive into
holes, the forward wheels going down kerchug, send-
ing bucketsful of muddy water upward to the roof
of the wagon and forward upor. the horses ; jounce
over corduroy which sets our teeth to chattering ;
then come upon a series of hollows through which
we ride as in a jolly-boat on the waves of the sea.
The wagon is ballasted by two members of Con-
eress on the back seat, and by our rotund physi-
cian and the Vice-President of the Northern Pa-
cific on the middle seat. The President is out-
side with the driver, on the lookout for breakers,
while the rest of us, like passengers on shipboard,
stowed beneath the hatches, must take whatever
comes, The members of Congress bob up and

down like electric pith-balls between the negative
7 J

146 © THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

and positive poles of a galvanic battery, — only
that the positive is the prevailing force! When
the forward wheels go down to the hub, they go
up; and then, as they descend, the seat, by some
unaccountable process, comes up, meets them half-
way,

Then we who are shaking our sides with laugh-
ter on the front seat, congratulating ourselves, like
the Pharisees, that we are not as they are, suddenly
find ourselves sprawling on the floor. When we
regain our places, the M.D. and Vice-President
come forward with a rush and embrace us frater-
nally. We get our legs so mixed up with our
neighbors’ that we can hardly tell whether our feet
belong to ourselves or to somebody else! The
light weights of the party are knocked about like
shuttlecocks, while the solid ones roll like those
ridiculous, round-bottomed, grinning images that
we see in the toy-shops! I fixd myself going up
and down after the manner of Sancho Panza when
tossed in a blanket.

Our dinners are well settled when we reach
}rindstone, —our stopping-place for the night.
The town is located on Grindstone Creek, and con-
sists of a log-house and stable, surrounded by
burnt timber.

Half a dozen men who have footed it from
Duluth are nursing their sore feet in one of the
three rooms on the ground-floor. The furniture

IN THE FOREST. 147

of the apartment consists of a cast-iron stove in
the centre and three rough benches against the
walls, which are papered with pictorial newspa-
pers.

The occupants are discussing the future pros-
pects of Duluth.

“Tt is a right smart chance of a place,” says a
tall, thin-faced, long-nosed man stretched in one
corner. We know by the utterance of that one
sentence that he is from southern Llinois.

“They have got their 7-deas pretty well up
though, on real estate, for a town that is only a
yearlin’,” says another, who, by his accent of the
i, has shown that he too is a Western man.

An Amazon in stature, with a round red face,
hurries up a supper of pork and fried eggs; and
then we who are going northward, and they who
are travelling southward, — sixteen of us, all told,
—creep up the nairow stairway to the unfinished
garret, and go to bed, with our noses close to the
rafters and long shingles, through the crevices of
which we look out and behold the stars marching
in grand procession across the midnight sky.

It is glorious to lie there and feel the ¢ive and
weariness go out of us; to look into the “ eterni-
ties of space,” as Carlyle says of the vault of
heaven. But our profound thoughts upon the
measureless empyrean are brought down to sub-
lunary things by four of the sleepers who engage

148 - THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

in a snoring contest. The race is so close, neck
and neck, or rather nose and nose, that it is im-
possible to decide whether the deep sonorcus —
not to say snorous ?— bass of the big fellow by the
window, or the sharp, piercing, energetic snorts
of the thin-faced, lantern-jawed, long-nosed man
from southern Illinois, is entitled to the trumpet
or horn, or whatever may be appropriate to sig-
nalize such championship. Either of them would
have been a power in the grand chorus of the
Coliseum Jubilee, and both together would be
equal to the big organ !

We are off early in the morning, feeling a little
sore in spots. The first thump extorts a sudden
oh! from a member of Congress, but we are philo-
sophic, and accommodate ourselves to circum-
stances, tell ‘stories between the bumpings, and
make the grand old forest ring with our laughter.
It is glorious to get away from the town, and out
into the woods, where you can shout and sing and
let yourself out without regard to what folks will
say! The fountain of perennial youth is in the
forest, — never in the city. Its healing, beautify-
ing, and restoring waters do not run through
aqueducts ; they are never pumped up; but you
must lie down upon the mossy bank beneath old
trees and drink from the crystal stream to obtain
them.

We quench our thirst from gurgling brooks, pick

IN THE FOREST. 149

berries by the roadside, walk ahead of the lum-
bering stage, and enjoy the solitude of the inter-
minable forest.

Eighteen miles of travel brings us to Kettle
River Crossing, where we sit down to a dinner of
blackberries and milk, bread and butter, and black-
berry-pie, in a clean little cottage, with pictures
on the walls, books on a shelf, a snow-white cloth
on the table, and a trim little woman waiting
upon us.

“May I ask where you are from ?”

“Manchester, New Hampshire.”

It was Lord Morpeth or the Duke of Argyle, I
have forgotten which, who said that New England
looked as if it had just been taken out of a band-
box; so with this one-storied log-house and every-
thing around it. We had sour-krout at Grind-
stone, but have blackberries here; and that is just
the difference between Dutchland and New Eng-
land, whether you seek for them on the Atlantic
slope or in the heart of the continent.

Space is wanting to tell of all the incidents of
a three days’ forest ride,—how we trolled for
pickerel on a little lake, seated in a birch-bark canoe,
and hauled them in hand over hand, — bouncing
fellows that furnished us a delicious breakfast ;
how we laughed and told stories, never minding
the bumping and thumping of the wagon, and
came out strong, like Mark Tapley, every one of

150 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE,

us ; how we gazed upon the towering pines and
sturdy oaks, and beheld the gloom settling over
nature when the great eclipse occurred ; and how,
just as night was coming on, we entered Supe-
rior, and saw a horned owl sitting on the ridge-
pole of a deserted house in the outskirts of the
town, surveying the desolate scene in the twilight,
— looking out upon the cemetery, the tenantless
houses, and the blinking lights in the windows.

Superior has been, and still is, a city of the Fu-
ture, rather than of the Present. It was laid out
before the war on a magnificent scale by a party
of Southerners, among whom was John C. Breck-
enridge, who is still a large owner in corner lots.

It has a fine situation at the southwestern cor-
ner of the lake, on a broad, level plateau, with a
densely timbered country behind it. The St. Louis
River, which rises in northern Minnesota, and
which comes tumbling over a series of cascades
formed by the high land between Lake Superior
and the Mississippi, spreads itself out into a shal-
low bay in front of the town, and reaches the lake
over a sand-bar.

Government has been erecting breakwaters to
control the current of the river, with the expecta-
tion of deepening the channel, which has about
nine feet of water; but thus far the improvements
have not accomplished the desired end. The bar
is a great impediment to navigation, and its exist-

IN THE FOREST. 151

ence has had a blighting effect on the once fair
prospects of Superior City. Dredges are employed
to deepen the channel, but those thus far used are
small, and not much has been accomplished. ‘The
citizens of Superior are confident that with a lib-
eral appropriation from government the channel
can be deepened, and that, when once cleared out,
it can be kept clear at a small expense.

Superior has suffered severely from the reaction
which followed the flush times in 1857. <A large
amount of money was expended in improvements,
—erading streets, opening roads, building piers,
and erecting houses. Then the war came on, and
all industry was paralyzed. The Southern pro-
prietors were in rebellion. The growth of the
place, which had been considerable, came to a sud-
den stand-still.

The situation of the town, while it is fortunate
in some respects, is unfortunate in others. It is
in Wisconsin, while the point which reaches across
the head of the lake is in Minnesota. The last-
named State wanted a port on the lake in its own
dominion, a1.2 so Duluth has sprung into exist-
ence as the rival of its older neighbor.

The St. Paul and Superior Railroad, having its
terminus at Duluth, lies wholly within the State
of Minnesota, and comes just near enough to Su-
perior to tantalize and vex the good people of that
place.

152 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

But the citizens of that town have good pluck.
I do not know what motto they have adopted for
their great corporate seal, but Nil Desperandum
would best set forth their hopefulness and deter-
mination. They are confident that Superior is yet
to be the queen city of the lake, and are deter-
mined to have railway communication with the
Mississippi by building a branch line to the St.
Paul and Superior Road.

Our party is kindly and hospitably entertained
by the people of the place, and to those who think
of the town as being so far northwest that it is be-
yond civilization, I have only to say that there are
few drawing-rooms in the East where more agree-
able company can be found than that which we
find in one of the parlors of Superior; few places
where the sonatas of Beethoven and Mendelssohn
can be inore exquisitely rendered upon the piano-
forte, by a lady who bckes her own bread and
cares for her family without the aid of a servant.

It is the glory of our civilization that it adapts
itself to all the circumstances of life. I have no
doubt that if Minnie, or Winnie, or Georgiana, or
almost any of the pale, attenuated young ladies
who are now frittering away their time in study-
ing the last style of paniers, or thrumming the
piano, or reading the last vapid novel, were to have
their lot cast in the West,—on the frontiers of
civilization, — where they would be compelled to do

IN THE FOREST. 153

something for themselves or those around them,
that they would manfully and womanfully accept
the situation, be far happier than they now are,
and worth more to themselves and to the world.

I dare say that nine out of every ten young men
selling dry-goods in retail stores in Boston and
elsewhere have high hopes for the future. They
are going to do something by and by. When they
get on a little farther they will show us what they
can accomplish. But the chances are that they
will never get that little farther on. The tide is
against them. One thing we are liable to forget ;
we measure ourselves by what we are going to do,
whereas the world estimates us by what we have
already done. How any young man of spirit can
settle himself down to earning a bare existence,
when all this vast region of the Northwest, with
its boundless undeveloped resources before him, is
inviting him on, is one of the unexplained mys-
teries of life. They will be Nobodies where they
are; they can be Somebodies in building up a new
society. The young man who has measured off
ribbon several years, as thousands have who are
doing no better to-day than they did five years
ago, in all probability will be no farther along, ex-
cept in years, five years hence than he is now.

7%

154 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

CHAPTER VIII.
DULUTH.

MBARKING at a pier, and steering north-
west, we pass up the bay, with the long,
narrow, natural breakwater, Minnesota Point, on
our right hand, and the level plateau of the
main-land, with a heavy forest growth, on our left.
Before us, on the sloping hillside of the northern
shore, lies the rapidly rising town of Duluth, un-
heard of twelve months ago, but now, to use a
Western term, “a right smart chance of a place.”

One hundred and ninety years ago Duluth, a
French explorer, was coasting along these shores,
and sailing up this bay over which we are gliding.
He wa. the first European to reach the head of the
lake. He crossed the country to the Upper Mis-
sissippi, descended it to St. Paul, where he met
Father Hennipen, who had been held in captivity
by the Indians.

It is suitable that so intrepid an explorer should
be held in remembrance, and the founders of the
new town have done wisely in naming it for him,
instead of calling it Washington or Jackson, or
adding another “ville” to the thousands now so
perplexing to post-office clerks.

DULUTIT 155

The new city of the Northwest is sheltered
from northerly winds by the high lands behind it.
The St. Louis River, a stream as large as the Mer-
rimae, after its turbulent course down the rocky
rapids, with a descent altogether of five hundred
feet, flows peacefully past the town into the Bay
of Superior. The river and lake together have
thrown up the long and narrow strip of land
called Minnesota Point, reaching nearly across the
head of the lake, and behind which lies the bay.
It is as if the Titans had thrown up a wide rail-
way embankment, or had tried their hand at filling
up the lake. The bay is shallow, but the men who
projected the city of Duluth are in no wise daunted
by that fact. They have planned to make a harbor
by building a mole out into the lake fifteen hun-
dred or two thousand feet. It is to extend from
the northern shore far enough to give good an-
chorage and protection to vessels and steamers.

The work to be done is in many respects similar
to what has been accomplished at both ends of the
Suez Canal. When M. Lesseps set about the con-
struction of that magnificent enterprise, he found
no harbor on the Mediterranean side, but only a low
sandy shore, against which the waves, driven by
the: prevailing western winds, were always break-
ing.

The shore was a narrow strip of sand, behind
which. lay a shallow lagoon called Lake Menzaleh.

156 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

There was no granite or solid material of any de-
scription at hand for the construction of a break-
water. Undaunted by the difficulties, he com-
menced the manufacture of blocks of stone on the
beach, mixing hydraulic lime brought from France
with the sand of the shore, and moistening it
with salt water. He erected powerful hydraulic
presses and worked them by steam. After the
blocks, which weighed twenty tons each, had dried
three months, they were taken out on barges and
tumbled into the ocean in the line of the moles, one
of which was 8,178 feet, nearly a mile and a half,
in length; the other 5,000 feet, enclosing an area
of about five hundred acres. More than 100,000
blocks of manufactured stone were required to
complete these two walls. They were not laid in
cement, for it has been found that a rubble wall is
better than finished masonry to resist the action
of the waves. Having completed the walls,
dredges were set to work, and the area has been
deepened enough to enable the largest vessels
navigating the Mediterranean to find safe anchor-
age.

These breakwaters were required for the outer
harbor, but an inner basin was needed. ‘To obtain
it, M. Lesseps cut a channel through the low ridge
of sand to Lake Menzaleh, where the water upon
an average was four feet deep. A large area has
been dredged in the lake, and docks constructed,

DULUTH. 157

and now the commerce of the world between the
Orient and the Occident passes through the basin
of Port Said.

The Suez Canal, the construction of a large
harbor ou the sand-beach of the Mediterranean,
and another of equal capacity on the Red Sea, is
one of the wonders of modern times, —a triumph
of engineering skill and of the indomitable will
of one energetic man.

The people of Duluth will not be under the ne-
cessity of manufacturing the material for the break-
water, for along the northern shore there is an
abundant supply of granite which can be easily
quarried. It is proposed to make an inner harbor |
by digging a canal across Minnesota Point and
excavating the shallows.

The difficulties to be overcome at Duluth bear
slight comparison with those already surmounted
on the Mediterranean, The commercial men of
Chicago contemplate the fencing in of a few hun-
dred acres of Lake Michigan; and there is no
reason to doubt that a like thing can be done at
the western end of Lake Superior.

Two years ago Duluth was a forest; but in this
month of May, 1870, it has two thousand inhab-
itants, with the prospect of doubling its population
within a twelvemonth. The woodman’s axe is
ringing on the hills, and the trees are falling be-
neath his sturdy strokes. From morning till night

158 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

we hear the joiner’s plane and the click of the
mason’s trowel. You may find excellent accom-
-modation in a large hotel, erected at a cost of forty
thousand dollars. "We may purchase the products
of all climes in the stores, — sugar from the West
Indies, coffee from Java, tea from China, or silks
from the looms of France.

The printing-press is here issuing the Duluth
Minnesotian, a sprightly sheet that looks sharply
after the interests of this growing town.

Musical as the ripples upon the pebbly shore of
the lake are the voices of the children reciting
tneir lessons in yonder school-house. I am borne
back to boyhood days,— to the old school-house,
with its hard benches, where I studied, played,
caught flies, was cheated swapping jack-knives, and
got a licking besides! Glorious days they were
for all that !

Presbyterian and Episcopal churches are already
organized, also an Historical Society. During the
last winter a course of lectures was sustained.

The stumps are yet to be seen in the streets,
but such is the beginning of a town which may
yet become one of the great commercial cities of
the interior.

A meteorological record kept at Superior since
1855 shows that the average period of navigation
has been two hundred and sixteen days, which is
fully as long as the season at Chicago.

DULUTH. 159

Year. Opening. Close. No. of Days.
1855 April 15 December 6 235
1856 16 November 22 220
1857 May 27 “ 20 Wy fg
1858 March 20 ss 22 247
1859 May 25 i 9 164
1860 April 7 December 4 238
1861 June 12 * 12 184
1862 April 28 16 233
1863 May 10 . 7 212
1864 April 23 “ 1 222
1865 «22 66 5 227
1866 May 5 . 10 220
1867 April 19 “ 1 225

Steaming up the river several miles to the foot
of the first rapids, and landing on the northern
shore, climbing up a wet and slippery bank of red
clay we are on the line of the railroad, upon which
several hundred men are employed.

Grades of fifty feet to the mile are necessary
from the lake up to the falls of the St. Louis, but
the tonnage of the road will be largely eastward,
down the grade, instead of westward.

The road will be about a hundred and forty
miles in length, connecting the lake with the net-
work of railroads centring at St. Paul. It is
liberally endowed, having in all 1,630,000 acres
of land heavily timbered with pine, butternut,
white oak, sugar-maple, ash, and other woods.

There is no doubt that this line of road will do
an immense amount of business. Such is the

160 . THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

estimation in which it is held by the moneyed men
of Philadelphia, that Mr. Jay Cooke obtained the
entire aimount of money necessary to construct it
in four days! The bonds, I believe, were not put
upon the market in the usual manner, by adver-
tising, but were taken at once by men who wanted
them for investment.

A single glance at the map must be sufficient to
convince any intelligent observer of the value of
such a franchise. The wheat of Minnesota, to
reach Chicago now, must be taken by steamers to
La Crosse or Prairie du Chien, and thence trans-
ported by rail across Wisconsin, but when this
road is put in operation, the products of Minne-
sota, gathered at St. Paul or Minneapolis, will seek
this new outlet.

Think of the scene of activity there will be
along the line, not only of this road, but of the
Northern Pacific, when the two are completed to
the lake, of an almost continuous traiu of cars, of
elevators pouring grain from cars to ships and
steamers. Think of the fleet that will soon whiten
this great inland sea, bearing the products of the
iiamense wheat-field eastward to the Atlantic
cities, and bringing back the industries of the
Eastern States !

It is only when I sit down to think of the future,
to measure it by the advancement already made,
that I can comprehend anything of the coming

DULUTH. 161

creatness of the Northwest, — 20,000,000 bush-
els of wheat this year; 500,000 inhabitants in the
State, yet scarcely a hundredth part of the area un-
der cultivation. What will be the product ten years
hence, when the population will reach 1,500,000 ?
What will it be twenty years hence? How shall
we obtain any conception or the business to be
done on these railways when Dakota, Montana,
Washington, and Oregon, and all the vast region of
the Assinniboine and the Saskatchawan, pour their
products to the nearest water-carriage eastward ?
We are already beyond our depth, and are utterly
unable to comprehend the probable development.
The men who are building this railroad from St.
Paul to Duluth have not failed to recognize this
one fact, that by water Duluth is as near as Chi-
cago to the Atlantic cities. Wheat and flour can
be transported as cheaply from Duluth to Buffalo
or Ogdensburg as from the southern end of Lake
Michigan, while the distance from St. Paul to Lake
Superior is only one hundred and forty miles
against four hundred and eighty to Chicago. We
may conclude that the wheat of Minnesota can be
carried fifteen or twenty cents a bushel cheaper
by Duluth than by Lake Michigan, —a saving to
the Eastern consumer of almost a dollar on each
barrel of flour. Twenty cents on a bushel saved
will add at least four dollars to the yearly product

of an acre of land.
K

162 © THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

The difference in freight on articles manwfac-
tured in the East and shipped to Minnesota will
be still more marked, for grain in bulk is taken at
low rates, while manufactured goods pay first-class.
The completion of this railway will be a great
blessing to the people of New England and of all
the East, as well as to those of the Northwest.
Anything that abridges distance and cheapens car-
riage is so much absolute gain. I do not think
that there is any public enterprise in the country
that promises to produce more important results
than the opening of this railway.

An elevator company has been organized by
several gentlemen in Boston and Philadelphia, and
the necessary buildings are now going up. The
wheat will be taken directly from the cars into
the elevator, and discharged into the fleet of pro-
pellers running to Cleveland, Buffalo, and Og-
densburg, already arranged for this Lake Superior
trade.

The region around the western end of the Lake
has resources for the development of a varied in-
dustry. The wooded section extends from Central
Wisconsin westward to the Leaf Hills beyond the
Mississippi, and northward to Lake Winnipeg.
This is to be the lumbering region of the North-
west, for the manufacture of all agricultural im-
plements, — reapers, mowers, harvesters, ploughs,
drills, seed-sowers, wagons, carriages, carts, and fur-

DULUTH. 163

niture, — besides furnishing lumber for fencing, for
railroad and building purposes.

Upon the St. Louis River there is exhaustless
water-power,—a descent of five hundred feet,
with a stream always pouring an abundant flood.
Its source is among the lakes of northern Minne-
sota, which, being filled to overflowing by the rains
of spring and early summer, become great reser-
voirs. With such a supply of water there is no
locality more favorably situated for the manufac-
ture of every variety of domestic articles. Un-
doubtedly the water-power will be largely employed
for flouring-mills. The climate is admirably adapt-
ed to the grinding of grain. The falls being so
near the lake, there will be cheap transportation
eastward to Buffalo, Cleveland, Philadelphia, New
York, and Boston, while westward are the prairies,
easily reached by the railroads.

The geological formation on the north side of
Lake Superior is granite, but as we follow up the
St. Louis River we come upon a ridge of slate. It
forms the backbone of the divide between the lake
and the Mississippi River.

A quarry has been opened from which slates of
a quality not inferior to those of Vermont are ob-
tained, and so far as we know it is the only quarry
in the Northwest. It is almost invaluable, for
Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, western Minnesota, and
Dakota have very little wood. Shingles are costly,

164 . THE SEAT OF EMPIRE,

but here is abundant material to cover the roofs
of the millions of houses that are yet to rise upon
the prairies.

This slate formation is thus referred to by
Thomas Clark, State Geologist, in his Report to the
Governor of Minnesota, dated December, 1864
(pp. 29, 30): —

“ These slates are found in all degrees of charac-
ter, from the common indurated argillaceous fissile
to the highly metamorphosed and even trappous
type. The working of these slates demands the
attention of builders; their real value is economi-
cally of more importance to the prairie and sparsely
timbered valley of the Mississippi than any other
deposit in the State’s possession on the lake. The
annual draught of hundreds of millions of lumber
upon the pine forests of the St. Croix and Upper
Mississippi and tributaries will exhaust those re-
gions before the close of this century. The trustees
of our youug Commonwealth are emphatically ad-
monished to encourage and foster the working of
these slates, and to bring them into use at the
earliest time possible. A hundred square feet of
dressed slates at the quarries of Vermont, New
York, and Canada are worth from one and a half
to two dollars ; the weight ranges from four to six
hundred pounds, or about four squares to the ton.
A ton of this roofing may be transported from the
St. Louis quarry to the Mississippi, by railway, at

DULUTH. 165

three dollars, and thence by river to the landings as
far down as St. Louis or Cairo; but the article
may be at all points in this State accessible by
boats or railway, at an average cost of fifteen
dollars per ton, or, at most, four dollars per square,
— little, if any, more than pine shingles; the
former as good for a century as the latter is for a
decade. The supply of these cliffs is literally in-
exhaustible ; if one fourth of this slate area in the
St. Louis Valley proves available, —- and doubtless
one half will, — it will yield one thousand millions
of tons.

“The demand for this slate at ten roofs to the
square mile, and for forty thousand square miles,
would be one million of tons, or one thousandth
part of the material. The annual demand for slates
in the Mississippi Valley may be reasonably esti-
mated at one hundred thousand tons, an exportable
product of two hundred thousand dollars, besides
the element of a permanent income to the railways
and water-craft of the State of a half-million of
dollars annually.”

To-day the country along the St. Louis is a wil-
derness. Climb the hills, and look upon the scene,
and think of the coming years.

**Thou shalt look
Upon the green and rolling forest tops,
And down into the secrets of the glens

And streams, that with their bordering thickets strive
To hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze at once,

166 © THE SEAT OF EMPIRE,

Here on white villages, and tilth and herds,
And swarming roads, and there on solitudes
That only hear the torrent, and the wind,
And eagle’s shriek.”

Here, through the bygone centuries, the Indians
have set their nets and hooks without ever dream-
ing of laying their hands upon the wealth that
Nature has ever in store for those who will labor
for it.

A. few of the original lords of the forests are
here, and they are the only idlers of this region.
They lounge in the streets, squat in groups under
the lee of buildings, and pick animated somethings
from their hair !

Their chief appears in an old army coat with
three stars on each shoulder, indicating that he
ranks as a lieutenant-general among his people.
He walks with dignity, although his old black
stove-pipe hat is badly squashed. The warriors
follow him, wrapped in blankets, with eagle feath- ,
ers stuck into their long black hair, and are as
dignified as the chief. Labor! not they. Pale-
faces and squaws may work, they never. Squaw-
power is their highest conception of a labor-saving
machine. They have fished in the leaping torrent,
but never thought of its being a giant that might
be put to work for their benefit.

It is evident that a great manufacturing industry
must spring up in this region, At Minneapolis,
St. Cloud, and here on the St. Louis, we find the

DULUTH. 167

three principal water-powers of the Northwest.
The town of Thompson, named in honor of one
of the proprietors, Mr, Edgar A, Thompson of
Philadelphia, has been laid out at the falls, and be-
ing situated on the line of the railroad, and so
convenient to the lake, will probably have a rapid
crowth. The St. Paul and Mississippi Railroad,
which winds up the northern bank of the river,
crosses the stream at that point, and strikes south-
ward through the forests to St. Paul.

The road, in addition to its grant of land, has re-
ceived from the city of St. Paul $200,000 in city
‘bonds, and this county of St. Louis at the head of
the lake has given $150,000 in county bonds. —

The lands of this company are generally heavily
timbered, — with pine, maple, ash, oak, and other
woods.

The white pines of this region are almost as
magnificent as those that formerly were the glory
of Maine and New Hampshire. Norway pines
abound. Besides transporting the lumber from its
own extensive tracts and the lands of the govern-
ment adjoining, it will be the thoroughfare for an
immense territory drained by the Snake, Kettle,
St. Louis, and St. Croix Rivers. —

The lands that bear such magnificent forest-
trees are excellent for agriculture. Nowhere in
the East have I ever seen ranker timothy and clo-
ver than we saw on our journey from St. Paul.

168 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

The company offer favorable terms to all set-
tlers. Men from Maine and New Hampshire are
already locating along the line, and setting up
saw-mills. They were lumbermen in the East,
and they prefer to follow the same business in the
West, rather than to speed the plough for a living.
I doubt not that the chances for making money
are quite as good in the timbered region as on
the prairies, for the lumber will pay for the land
several times over, which, when put into grain or
grass, ylelds enormously.

THE MINING REGION, 169

CHAPTER IX.
THE MINING REGION.

HE sun was throwing his morning beams upon

the tree-tops of the Apostle Islands, as our

little steamer, chartered for the occasion at Superior,

rounded the promontory of the main-land, turned

its prow southward, and glided into the harbor of
Bayfield, on the southern shore of the lake.

We had made the passage from Superior City
during the night, and were on deck at daybreak to
see the beauties of the islands, of which so much
has been written by explorers and tourists. The
Scenery is not bold, but beautiful. Perhaps there
is ne place on the lake where more charming vistas
open to the eye, or where there is such a succes-
sion of entrancing views.

The islands, eighteen in number, lie north of
the promontory. They would appear as high hills,
with rounded summits, crowned with a dense for-
est growth, if the waters were drained off; for all
around, between the islands and the mainland, are
deep soundings. There is no ‘harbor on the Atlan-
tic coast, ncne in the world, more accessible than
Bayfield, or more securely land-locked. It may

be approached during the wildest storm, no matter
8 4

170 THE SEAT OF EMFIRE.

which way the wind is blowing. When the north-
easters raise a sea as terrible as that which some-
times breaks upon Nahant, the captains of steamers

.and schooners on Lake Superior run for the Apos-
tle Islands.

Bayfield is about sixty miles from Superior City,
and is the first harbor where vessels can find shelter
east of the head of the lake. The Apostle Islands
seem to have been dumped into the lake for the
benefit of the mighty tide of commerce which in
the coming years is to float upon this inland sea.

“Tt is,’ said our captain, “the only first-class
harbor on the lake. It can be approached in «ll
weathers ; the shores are bold, the water deep, the
anchorage excellent, and the ice leaves it almost
two weeks earlier in spring than the other harbors
at the head of the lake.”

The town of Bayfield is named for an officer of
the Royal Engineers, who was employed years
ago in surveying the lake. His work was well
done, and till recently his charts have been relied
on by the sailing-masters ; but the surveys of the
United States Engineers, now approaching com-
pletion, are more minute and accurate.

The few houses that make up the town are beau-
tifully located, on the western side of the bay.
Madeline Island, the largest of the group, lies im-
mediately in front, and s’alters the harbor and
town from the northeast storms.

THE MINING REGION. 171

The scream of the steamer’s whistle rings sharply
on the morning air,— while main-land and island,
harbor and forest, repeat its echoes. It wakes up
all the braves, squaws, and pappooses in the wig-
wams and log-houses of the Chippewa reservation,
and all the inhabitants of Bayfield. The sun is just
making his appearance when we run alongside the
pier. It is an early hour for a dozen strangers,
with sharp-set appetites, to make a morning call,—
more than that, to drop in thus unceremoniously
upon a private citizen for hreakfast.

There being no hotel in the place, we are put to
this strait. Possibly old Nokomis, who is cook-
ing breakfast in a little iron pot with a big piece
knocked out of its rim, who squats on the ground
and picks out the most savory morsels with her
fingers, would share her meal with us, but she
does not invite us to breakfast, nor do we care to
make vurselves at home in the wigwam.

But there is rare hospitality awaiting us. A
gentleman who lives in a large white house in the
centre of the town, Captain Vaughn, though not
through with his morning nap when we steam up
the harbor, is wide awake in an instant.

I wonder if there is another housewife in the
United States who would provide such an ample
repast as that which, in an incredibly short space
of time, appeared on the table, prepared by Mrs.
Vaughn,—such a tender steak, mealy potatoes,

172 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

nice biscuit, delicious coffee, berries and swect
milk; a table-cloth as white as the driven snow;
and the hostess the picture of health, presiding at
the table with charming ease and grace, not at all
disturbed by such an avalanche of company at
such an hour !

Where the breakfast came from, or who cooked
it so quickly, is an unexplained mystery; and
then there was a basketful of lunch put up by
somebody for us to devour while coasting about
the bay, and the hostess the while found time to
talk with us, to sit down to the parlor organ and
charm us with music. So much for a Bayfield
lady, born in Ohio, of stanch Yankee stock.

Embarking on Captain Vaughn’s little steam-
yacht, we go dancing along the shores, now run-
ning near the bluffs to examine the sandstone for-
mation like that of the Hudson, or looking up to
the tall pines waving their dark green plumes, or
beholding the lumbermen felling the old monarchs
and dragging them with stout teams to the Bay-
field saw-mills. A run of about fifteen miles
brings us to the city of Ashland, situated at the
head of the bay. It makes quite an imposing ap-
pearance when you are several miles distant, and
upon landing you find that you have been zmposed
upon. Somebody came here years ago, laid out a
town, surveyed the lots, cut out magnificent ave-
nues through the forest, found men who believed

THE MINING REGION. 173

that Ashland was to be a great city, who bought
lots and built houses; but the crowd did not
come; the few who came soon turned their backs
upon the place, leaving all their improvements.
One German family remains. Two pigs were in
possession of a parlor in one deserted house, and a
cow quietly chewing her cud in another.

A mile east of Ashland is Bay City, another
place planned by speculators, but which probably
might be purchased at a discount.

The country around Bayfield is in a primitive
condition now, but the time is rapidly approaching
fora change. By and by this will be a great resort
for tourists and seekers after health. Nature has
made it for a sanitariwm. No mineral springs
have been discovered warranted to cure all dis-
eases, but nowhere in this Northwest has nature
compounded purer air, distilled sweeter water, or
painted lovelier landscapes. The time will come
when the people of Chicago, Milwaukie, and other
Western cities, seeking rest and recreation during
the summer months, will flee to this harbor of re-
pose. The fish are as numerous here, and as eager
to bite the hook, as anywhere else on the lake,
while the streams of the main-land abound with
trout. By and by this old red sandstone will be
transformed into elegant mansions overlooking the
blue waters, and it would not be strange if com-
merce reared a great mart around this harbor.

174 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

~ The charter of the Northern Pacific Railroad ex-
tends to this point, and as the road would pass
through heavily timbered lands, the company will
find it for their interest to open the line, as it will
also form a connecting link between the West and
the iron region of Lake Superior.

But whether a city rises here, whether a rail-
road is constructed or not, let me say to any one
who wants to pull out big trout that this is the
place.

An Indian who has been trying his luck shows
a string of five-pounders, caught in one of the
small streams entering the bay. There is no sport
like trout-fishing. Think of stealing on tiptoe
along the winding stream, dropping your hook into
the gurgling waters, and feeling a moment later
something tugging, turning, pulling, twisting, run-
ning, now to the right, now to the left, up stream,
down stream, making the thin cord spin, till your
heart leaps into your throat through fear of its
breaking, — fear giving place to hope, hope to |
triumph, when at length you land a seven-pounder
on the green and mossy bank! You find such
trout in the streams that empty into the lake
opposite the Apostle Islands, — trout mottled with
crimson and gold !

Bidding good by to our generous host and host-
ess we take an eastward-bound steamer in the
evening for a trip down the lake, stopping for an

THE MINING REGION. 175

hour or two at Ontonagon, then steaming on,
rounding Keweenaw Point during the night, and
reaching Marquette in the morning.

Fishing-boats are dancing on the waves, yachts
scudding along the shore, tourists rambling over
the rocks at our right hand, throwing their lines,
pulling up big trout, steamers and schooners are
lying in the harbor, and thrift, activity, and enter-
prise is everywhere visible.

We see an immense structure, resembling a rail-
way bridge, built out into the harbor. It is several
hundred feet in length, and twenty or more in
height. A train of cars comes thundering down a
grade, and out upon the bridge, while men run-
ning from car to car knock out here and there a
bolt or lift a catch, and we hear a rumbling and
thundering, and feel the wharf tremble beneath
our feet. It is not an earthquake ; they are only
unloading iron ore from the cars into bins.

A man by means of machinery raises a trap-
door, and the black mass, starting with a rush,
thunders once more as it plunges into the hold of
a schooner. It requires but a few minutes to take
in a cargo. And then, shaking out her sails, the
schooner shapes her course eastward along the
“Pictured Rocks” for the St. Mary’s Canal, bound
for Cleveland, Erie, or Chicago with her freight of
crude ore to be smelted and rolled where coal is
near at hand.

176 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

The town is well laid out. Although the busi-
ness portion was destroyed by fire not many
months ago, it has been rebuilt. There are
elegant residences, churches, school- houses, and
stores. Men walk the streets as if they had a
little more business on hand than they could well
attend to.

The men who used to frequent this region to
trade with the Indians knew as early as 1830 that
iron existed in the hills. But it was not till 1845,
just a quarter of a century ago, that any attempt
was made to test the ore. Dr. Jackson, of Boston,
who visited Lake Superior in 1844, pronounced it
of excellent quality. He informed Mr. Lyman
Pray, of Charlestown, Mass., of its existence, and
that the Indians reported a “mountain” of it not
far from Marquette. Mr. Pray at once started on
an exploring expedition, reached Lake Superior,
obtained an Indian guide, penetrated the forest,
and found the hills filled with ore.

About the same time a gentleman named Ev-
erett obtained half a ton of it, which the Indians
and half-breeds carried on their backs to the
Carp River, and transported it to the lake in
canoes.

It was smelted, but was so different from that
of Pennsylvania that the iron-masters shook their
heads. Some declared that it was of no particular
value, others that it could not be worked.

THE MINING REGION. 177

The Pittsburg iron-men pronounced it worth-
less. But Mr. Everett persevered, sent a small
quantity to the Coldwater forge, where it was
smelted and rolled into a bar, from which he made
a knife-blade, and was convinced that the metal
was superior in quality to any other deposit in the
country.

The Jackson Company was at once formed for
mining in the iron and copper region. The cop-
per fever was at its height, and the company was
organized with a view of working both metals
if thought advisable. A forge was erected on
the Carp River in 1847, making four blooms a
day, each about four feet long and eight inches
thick.

Another was built, in 1854, by a company from
Worcester, Mass., but so small was the produc-
tion that in 1856 the shipment only reached five
thousand tons. The superior qualities of the
metal began to be known. Other companies were
formed and improvements made; railroads and
docks were constructed, and the production has
had a steady increase, till it has reached a high
figure.

There are fourteen companies engaged in min-
ing, — two have just commenced, while the others
are well developed. The production of the twelve
principal mines for the year 1868 will be seen from

the following figures : —
8 * L

178 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

Tons.

Jackson, Fs Sb) ese aie lien ade ea
Cleveland, Sid ereR NE a” ene 102,213
RT CROC 5) gee Nate ais 7,977
Lake Superior, . - ° Be Nine 105,745
New York, ‘ ‘ ‘ ° » 45,665
Lake Angeline, . ‘ ‘ eying 27,651
Edwards, ; . ° . . 17,360
Tron Mountain, . ° ° ; . 3,836
Washington, oN Ghiktea) nde oleae! ee cia tn O
New En, land, . Sree ier ig 8,257
Champion, ‘ ° ah ‘ 6,255
Barnum, . ‘ ‘ F : ‘ 14,380

Total, ‘ : ° ‘ ° . 506,803

The increase over the previous year is between
forty and fifty thousand tons. The yield for 1869
was about 650,000 tons. The entire production
of all the mines up to the close of 1868 is 2,300,000
tons.

Iron mining in this region is in its infancy;
and yet the value of the metal produced last year
amounts to eighteen million dollars.

The cause for this rapid development is found
in the fact that the Lake Superior ore makes the
best iron in the world. Persistent efforts were
made to cry it down, but those who were engaged
in its production invited rigid tests.

Its tenacity, in comparison with other quali-
ties, will be seen by the following tabular state-
ment : —

THE MINING REGION, 179

Swedish, Te a ee a
English Cable bolt, Pe ee, ee
Russian, . . . «© «© 6 « £76

Lake Superior, . ° ° ‘ ° . 894

When this fact was made known, railroad com-
panies began to use Lake Superior iron for the
construction of locomotives, car-wheels, and axles,
Boiler builders wanted it. Those who tried it
were eager to obtain more, and the result is seen
in the rapidly increasing demand.

The average cost of mining and delivering the
ore in cars at the mines is estimated at about
$2 per ton. It is shipped to Cleveland at a
cost of $4.35, making $6.85 when laid on the
dock in that city, where it is readily sold for $8,
leaving a profit of about $1.65 per ton for the
shipper. Perhaps, including insurance and inci-
dentals, the profit may be reduced to about $1.25
per ton. It will be seen that this is a very remu-
nerative operation.

About one hundred furnaces in Ohio and Penn-
sylvania use Lake Superior ore almost exclusively,
while others mix it with the ores of those re-
gions.

A large amount is smelted at Lake Superior,
where charcoal is used. The forests in the vicinity
of the mines are rapidly disappearing. The wide-
spreading sugar-maple, the hardy yellow birch, the
feathery hackmatack and evergreen hemlock are

180 — THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

alike tumbled into the coal-pit to supply fuel for
the demands of commerce.

The charcoal consumed per ton in smelting costs
about eleven cents per bushel. For reducing a
ton of the best ore about a hundred and ten
bushels are required; for a ton of the poorest
about a hundred and forty bushels, giving an
average of $13 per ton. The cost of mining is,
as has already been stated, about $2 per ton. To
this must be added furnace-labor, interest on cap-
ital employed, insurance, freight, commission, mak-
ing the total cost about $35 .aton. As the iron
commands the highest price in the market, it will
be seen that the iron companies of Lake Superior
are having an enormous income.

Some men who purchased land at government
price are on the high road to fortune. One man
entered eighty acres of land, which now nets him
twenty-four thousand dollars per annum !

A railroad runs due west from Marquette, gain-
ing by steep gradients the general level of the
ridge between Superior and Michigan. It is called
the Marquette and Ontonagon Railroad, and will
soon form an important link in the great iron high-
way across the continent. It is about twenty
miles from Marquette to the principal mines, which
are also reached by rail from Escanaba, on Green
Bay, a distance of about seventy miles.

The ore is generally found in hills ranging from

THE MINING REGION. 181

one to five hundred feet above the level of the
surrounding country. The elevations can hardly
be called mountains; they are knolls rather. They
are iron warts on Dame Nature’s face. They are
partially covered with earth, — the slcw-forming
deposits of the alluvial period.

There are five varieties of ore. The most valua-
ble is what is called the specular hematite, which
chemically is known as a pure anhydrous sesqui-
omde. This ore yields about sixty-five per cent
of pure iron. It is sometimes found in conjunc-
tion with red quartz, and is then known as mixed
ore.

The next in importance is a soft hematite, re-
sembling the ores of Pennsylvania and Connecticut.
It is quite porous, is more easily reduced than any
other variety, and yields about fifty per cent of
pure iron.

The magnetic ores are found farther west than
those already described. The Michigan, Washing-
ton, Champion, and Edwards mines are all mag-
netic. Sometimes the magnetic and specular lie
side by side, and it is a puzzle to geologists and
chemists alike to account for the difference be-
tween them. As yet we are not able to under-
stand by what subtle alchemy the change has been
produced.

Another variety is called the silicious hematite,
which is more difficult of reduction than the

182 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE, ~

others. It varies in richness, and there is an un-
limited supply.

The fifth variety is a silicious hematite found
with manganese, which, when mixed with other
ores, produces an excellent quality of iron. Very
little of this ore has been mined as yet, and its
relative value is not ascertained.

The best iron cannot be manufactured from one
variety, but by mixing ores strength and ductility
both are obtained. England senas to Russia and
Sweden for magnetic ores to mix with those pro-
duced in Lancashire, for the manufacture of steel.
The fires of Sheffield would soon go out if the
manufactures in that town were dependent on
English ore alone. The iron-masters there could
not make steel good enough for a blacksmith’s
use, to say nothing of that needed for cutlery, if
they were cut off from foreign magnetic ores.

Here, at Lake Superior, those necessary for the
production of the best of steel lie side by side.
A mixture of the hematite and magnetic gives a
metal superior, in every respect, to any that Eng-
land can produce.

This one fact settles the question of the future of
this region. It is to become one of the great iron-
marts of the world. It is to give, by and by, the
supremacy to America in the production of steel.

It is already settled, by trial, that every grade
of iron now in use in arts and manufactures can

THE MINING REGION. 183

be produced here at Lake Superior by mixing the
various ores.

The miners are a hardy set of men, rough, un-
couth, but enterprising. They live in small cot-
tages, make excellent wages, drink whiskey, and
rear large families. How happens it that in all
new communities there is such an abundance of
children? They throng every doorway, and by
every house we see them tumbling in the dirt.
Nearly every woman has a child in her arms.

We cannot expect to see the refinements and
luxuries of old communities in a country where
the stumps have not yet been cleared from the
streets, and where the spruces and hemlocks are
still waving above the cottages of the settlers,
but here are the elements of society. These hard-
handed men are developing this region, earning a
livelihood for themselves and enriching those who
employ them. Towns are springing into exist-
ence. We find Ishpeming rising out of a swamp.
Imagine a spruce forest standing in a bog where
the trees are so thick that there is hardly room
enough for the lumbermen to swing their axes, the
swamp being a stagnant pool of dark-colored water
covered with green slime!

An enterprising town-builder purchased this bog
for a song, and has laid out acity. Here it is,
— dwelling-houses and stores standing on posts
driven into the mud, or resting on the stumps.

184 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

He has filled up the streets with the débris from
the mines. Frogs croak beneath the dwellings, or
sun themselves on the sills. The town is not thus
growing from the swamp because there is no solid
land, but because the upland has exhaustless beds
of iron ore beneath, too valuable to be devoted to
building purposes.

I have seen few localities so full of promise for
the future, not this one little spot in the vicinity
of Marquette, but the entire metallic region be-
tween Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. |

Look at the locality! It is half-way across the
continent. Lake Michigan laves the southern,
Superior the northern shore, while the St. Law-
rence furnishes water-carriage to the Atlantic.
A hundred and fifty miles of rail from Bayfield
will give connection with the navigable waters of
the Mississippi. Through this peninsula will yet
lie the shortest route between the Atlantic and
Pacific. Westward are the wheat-fields of the
continent, to be peopled by an industrious and
thriving community. There’ 1.0 point more cen-
tral than this for easy transportation.

Here, just where the future millions can be
easiest served, exhaustless deposits of the best ore
in the world have been placed by a Divine hand
for the use and welfare of the mighty race now
beginning to put forth its energies on this western
hemisphere.

THE MINING REGION. 185

Towns, cities, and villages are to arise amid these
hills; the forests and the hills themselves are to
disappear. The product, now worth seventeen mil-
lions of dollars per annum, erelong will be valued
at a hundred millions.

I think of the coming years when this place
will be musical with the hum of machinery ; when
the stillness of the surmmer day and the crisp air
of winter will be broken by the songs of men at
work amid flaming forges, or at the ringing anvil.
From Marquette, and Bayfield, and Ontonagon,
and Escanaba, from every harbor on these in-
land seas, steamers and schooners, brigs and ships,
will depart freighted with ore; hither they will
come, bringing the products of the farm and work-
shop. Heavily loaded trains will thunder over
railroads, carrying to every quarter of our vast
domain the metals manufactured from the mines
of Lake Superior.

We have but to think of the capabilities of this
region, its extent and area, the increase of popula-
tion, the development of resources, the construc-
tion of railways, the growth of cities and towns;
we have only to grasp the probabilities of the fu-
ture, to discern the dawning commercial greatness
of this section of our country.

186 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

CHAPTER X.
A FAMILIAR TALK.

«“ T HAVE called to have a little talk about the
West, and think that I should like a farm in
Minnesota or in the Red River country,” said a
gentleman not long since, who introduced himself
as Mr. Blotter, and who said he was “clerking it.”
“I want to go out West and raise stock,” said
another gentleman who stopped me on the street.

“Where would you advise a fellow to go who
hasn’t much money, but who is n’t afraid to work ?”
said a stout young man from Maine.

“T am a machinist, and want to try my luck
out West,” said another young man hailing from
a manufacturing town in Massachusetts.

“T am manufacturing chairs, and want to know
if there is a place out West where I can build up
a good business,” said another.

Many other gentlemen, either in person or by
letter, have asked for specific information.

It is not to be expected that I can point out the
exact locality suited to each individual, or with
which they would be suited, but for the benetit
of all concerned I give the substance of an eve-
ning’s talk with Mr. Blotter.

FAMILIAR TALK. 187

“T want a farm, I am tired of the city,” said he.

Well, sir, you can be accommodated. The
United States government has several million
acres of land, — at least 30,000,000 in Minnesota,
to say nothing of Dakota and the region beyond,
—and you can help yourself to a farm out of any
unoccupied territory. The Homestead Law of 1862
gives a hundred and sixty acres, free of cost, to
actual settlers, whether foreign or native, male or
female, over twenty-one years old, or to minors
having served fourteen days in the army. For-
eigners must declare their intention to become
citizens. Under the present Pre-emption Law
settlers often live on their claims many years
before they are called on to pay the $1.25 per
acre, — the land in the mean time having risen to
$10 or $12 per acre. A recent decision gives
single women the right to pre-empt. Five years’
residence on the land is required by the Home-
stead Law, and it is not liable to any debts con-
tracted before the issuing of the patent.

The State of Minnesota has a liberal law relative
to the exemption of real estate from execution,
A homestead of eighty acres, or one lot and house,
is exempt; also, five hundred dollars’ worth of
furniture, besides tools, bed and bedding, sewing-
machine, three cows, ten hogs, twenty sheep, a
span of horses, or one horse and one yoke of oxen,
twelve months’ provisions for family and stock, one

188 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

wagon, two ploughs, tools of a mechanic, library of
a professional man, five hundred doliars’ worth of
stock if a trader, and various other articies.

You will find several railroad companies ready
to sell you eighty, or a hundred and sixty, or
six hundred and forty acres in a body, at reason-
able rates, giving you accommodating terms.

“Would you take a homestead from government,
or would you buy lands along the line of a rail-
road ?”

That is for you to say. If you take a homestead
it will necessarily be beyond the ten-mile limit of
the land granted to the road, where the advance
in value will not keep pace with lands nearer the
line. You will find government lands near some
of the railroads, which you can purchase for $ 2.50
per acre, cash down. The railroad companies
will charge you from $2 to $10, according to
location, but will give you time for payment.

“What are their terms ?”

The St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, the main line
of which is to be completed to the Red River this
year, and which owns the branch line running from
St. Paul up the east bank of the Mississippi to St.
Cloud, have a million acres of prairie, meadow,
and timber lands which they will sell in tracts of
forty acres or more, and make the terms easy. Sup-
pose you were to buy eighty acres at $8 per acre,
that would give you a snug farm for $640. If

A FAMILIAR TALK. 189

you can pay cash down, they will make it $7 per
acre, — $80 saved at the outset; but if you have
only a few dollars in your pocket they will let you
pay a year’s interest at seven per cent to begin
with, and the principal and interest in ten annual
payments. The figures would then run in this
way :—

Eighty acres at $8 per acre,...... $ 640.
Interest. Principal. Total.
Ist year, . . $44.80
Ble ee OO a ch BERIO. oes BLOGB2
ee da OG Foc ek MY he. 4... me
Beg a ks. Ot. be ORI es a SOOO
ee eT OOS Ss ss CROO 9088
GWG sien ame ee CROR 6 B6AD
Tn a he beeen ORO Tes Soe BOR
St ei we te ROE ce I AEDO. oe ies CRE
Ree aids ace. | RRR sien gy MRO: og Sig ge
TO ei BAO ie 8 ORO se, OR aS
Wo a sees ce OMUU >, coy OROU

“The second year will be the hardest,” said Mr.
Blotter, “for I shall have to fence my farm, build
a cabin, and purchase stock and tools. Is there
fencing material near ?”

That depends upon where you locate. If you
are near the line of the railway, you can have it
brought by cars. If you locate near the “ Big
Woods” on the main line west of Minneapolis,
you will have timber near at hand. Numerous
saw-mills are being erected, some driven by water

190 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

and others by steam. The timbered lands of the
company are already held at high rates, — from $7
to $10 per acre. The country beyond the “ Big
Woods” is all prairie, with no timber except a few
trees along the streams. It is filling up so rapidly
with settlers that wood-lands are in great demand,
for when cleared they are just as valuable as the
prairie for farming purposes.

Many settlers who took up homesteads before
the railroad was surveyed now find themselves in
good circumstances, especially if they are near a
station. In many places near towns, land which
a year ago could have been had for $2.50 per acre
is worth $20 to-day.

“Tg the land in the Mississippi Valley above St.
Paul any better than that of the prairies ?”

Perhaps you lave a mistaken idea in regard to
the Mississippi Valley. There are no bottom-lands —
on the Upper Mississippi. The prairie borders upon
the river. You will find the lafid on the east side
better adapted to grazing than for raising wheat.
The company do not hold their lands along the
branch at so high a figure as on the main line.
Some of my Minnesota friends say that stock-grow-
ing on the light lands east of the Mississippi 1s
quite as profitable as raising wheat. Cattle, sheep,
and horses transport themselves to market, but you
must draw your grain.

If you are going into stock-raising, you can af-

A FAMILIAR TALK. 191

ford to be at a greater distance from a railroad sta-
tion than the man who raises wheat. It would un-
doubtedly be for the interest of the company to sell
you their outlying lands along the branch line at a
low figure, for it would enhance the value of those
nearer the road. You will find St. Cloud and Ano-
ka thriving places, which, with St. Paul and Min-
neapolis, will give a good home demand for beef
and mutton, to say nothing of the facilities for
reaching Eastern markets by the railroads and lakes,

“Do the people of Minnesota use fertilizers ?”

No; they allow the manure to accumulate
around their stables, or else dump it into the river
to get rid of it!

They sow wheat on the same field year after
year, and return nothing to the ground. They
even burn the straw, and there can be but one
’ result coming from such a process, — exhaustion
of the soil, — poor, worn-out farms by and by.

The farmers of the West are cruel towards
Mother Earth. She freely bestows her riches, and
then, not satisfied with her gifts, they plunder her.
Men everywhere are shouting for an eight-hour
law ; they must have rest, time for recreation and
improvement of body and mind; but they give the
soil no time for recuperation. Men expect to be
paid for their labors, but they make no payment
to the kind mother who feeds them; they make
her work and live on nothing. Farming, as now

192 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE,

carried on in the West and Northwest, is down-
right robbery and plunder, and nothing else. If
the present exhaustive system is kept up, the time
will come when the wheat-fields of Minnesota, in-
stead of producing twenty-five bushels to the acre
upon an average throughout the State, will not
yield ten, which is the product in Ohio; and yet,
with a systematic rotation of crops and application
of fertilizers, the present marvellous richness of
the soil can be maintained forever.

“Do the tame grasses flourish ?”

Splendidly ; I never saw finer fields of timothy
than along the line of the St. Paul and Pacific
Railroad, west of Minneapolis. White clover
seems to spring up of its own accord. I remem-
ber that I saw it growing luxuriantly along a path-
way in the Red River Valley, and by the side of
the military road leading through the woods to
Lake Superior. Hay is very abundant, and ex-
ceedingly cheap in Minnesota. I doubt if there
is a State in the Union that has a greater breadth
of first-class grass-lands. Hon. Thomas Clarke,
Assistant State Geologist, estimates the area of
meadow-lands between the St. Croix and the Mis-
sissippi, and south of Sandy Lake, at a million
acres. He says: “Some of these are very exten-
sive, and bear a luxuriant growth of grass, often
five or six feet in height. It is coarse, but sweet,
and is said to make excellent hay.”

A FAMILIAR TALK. 193

I passed through some of those meadows, and
can speak from personal observation. I saw many
acres that would yield two tons to the acre. The
grasses are native, flat-leaved, foul-meadow and
blue-joint, just such as I used to swing a scythe
through years ago in a meadow in New Hamp-
shire which furnished a fair quality of hay. The
time will come when those lands will be valuable,
although they are not held very high at present.
A few years ago the Kankakee swamps in I[]linois
and Indiana were valueless, but now they yield
many thousand tons of hay, and are rising in the
market.

“ How about fruit? I don’t want to go where
I cannot raise fruit.”

Those native to the soil are strawberries, rasp-
berries, blackberries, gooseberries, huckleberries,
cherries, and plums. I picked all of these upon
the prairies and along the streams while there.
The wild plum is very abundant, and in the fall
of the year you will see thousands of bushels in
the markets at St. Paul and Minneapolis. They
make an excellent sauce or preserve.

Minnesota may be called the Cranberry State.
Many farmers make more money from their cran-
berry-meadows than from their wheat-fields. The
marshes in the northern section of the State are
covered with vines, and the lands along the St.
Croix yield abundantly.

3] M

194 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

Mr. Clarke, the geologist, says: “ There are
256,000 acres of cranberry-marsh in the triangle
between the St. Croix and Mississippi, and bound-
ed north by the St. Louis and Prairie Rivers! The
high price paid for this delicious fruit makes its
cultivation very profitable in Minnesota, as well
as in New Jersey and on Cape Cod.”

“Can apples be raised? I am fond of them,
and should consider it a drawback if I could not
have an apple-orchard,” said the persistent Mr.
Blotter.

I understand that till within a year or two the
prospect for apples was not very encouraging. The
first orchards were from Illinois nurseries, and it
was not till native stocks were started that suc-
cess attended the fruit-growers’ efforts ; but now
they have orchards as thrifty and bountiful as any
in the courtry. At the last State Fair held at
Rochester, one fruit-grower had fifty bushels on
exhibition, and two hundred more at home. It
was estimated that the yield in Winona County
last year was thirty thousand bushels.*

_ The St. Paul Press, noticing the display of fruits
at the Ramsay and Hennipen County Fair, says:
“These two fairs have set at rest the long-mooted

* These and many other facts relating to Minnesota are ob-
tained from ‘* Minnesota as it is in 1870,” by J. W. McClung,
of St. Paul, —an exceedingly valuable work, crammed with in-
formation.

A FAMILIAR TALK. 195

question, whether Minnesota is an apple-growing
State. Over two hundred varieties of the apple,
exclusive of the crab species, were exhibited at
Minneapolis, and a large number at St. Paul, of
the finest development and flavor, and this fact
will give an immense impetus to fruit-growing in
our State.”

The following varieties were exhibited at the
last meeting of the Fruit-Growers’ Association, of
Winona County: The Duchess of Oldenburg, Ut-
ter’s Large, Early Red, Sweet June, Perry Rus-
set, Fall Stripe, Keswick Codlin, Red Astracan,
Plum Cider, Phcenix, Wagner, Ben Davis, German
Bough, Carolina Red June, Bailey Sweet, St.
Lawrence, Sops of Wine, Seek-no-further, Famuse,
Price Sweet, Pomme Grise, Tompkins County
King, Northern Spy, Golden Russet, Sweet Pear,
Yellow Ingestrie, Yellow Bellflower, Lady Finger,
Raule’s Jannet, Kirkbridge White, Janiton, Dume-
low, Winter Wine Sap, Chronicle, Fall Wine Sap,
Rosseau, Colvert, Benoni, Red Romanite.

Many of the above are raised in New England,
so that those people who may cut loose from the
East need not be apprehensive that they are bid-
ding good by forever to the favorite fruits that
have been a comfort as well as a sugary in their
former homes.

“JY take it that grapes do not grow there; it
must be too far north,” said my visitor.

196° THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

On the contrary, they are indigenous. You find
wild grapes along the streams, and in the gardens
around St. Paul and Minneapolis you will see
many of the cultivated varieties bearing magnifi-
cent clusters on the luxuriant vines.

“How about corn, rye, oats, and other grains;
can they be raised with profit ?”

The following figures, taken from tke official re-
port made to the last legislature of the products
for 1869, will show the capabilities of the soil :—

Average per Acre.
Wheat, . . 18,500,000 bushels, . : - 18}
Corn, . ‘ 6,125,000 “. , ‘ 35
Oats, . . 11,816,400 “ , wi ead
Potatoes, . 2,745,000 “ , es 90
Barley, . ; 625,000 “ , . 9 ES
Rye, . ‘ ot OOOO PE gr Se ° 18
Buckwheat, . _.28000 “ . . . 16
Hay, . ; . 430,000 tons, . oe 2.08
Wool, . j 390,000 pounds.
Butter, . 5,600,000 “
Cheese, . ; 145,000 “
Sorghum, . . 80,000 yallons syrup.
Maple Sugar, . 300,000 pounds,
Flax, . ‘ . 170,000 “

From this it would seem that the State is des-
tined to be one of the most productive in the
Union.

“Have they good schools out there ?”

Just as good as in New England. Two sections
of land are set aside for the common-school fund.

A FAMILIAR T’LK. 197

The entire amount of school lands in the State
will be three million acres.

These are sold at the rate of five dollars per
acre, and the money invested in State or govern-
ment bonds. Governor Marshall, in his last mes-
sage, estimated the sum ultimately to be derived
from the lands at sixteen million dollars. A
school tax of two mills on the dollar is levied,
which, with the interest from the fund, gives a
liberal amount for education.

“At what season of the year ought a man to
go West ?”

That depends very much upon what you intend
todo. If you are going to farming, and intend to
settle upon the prairies, you must be there in
season to break up your ground in July. If the
sod is turned when the grass is full of juices, it
decays quickly, and your ground will be in good
condition for next year’s ploughing. If you go into
the timbered lands along the Lake Superior and
Mississippi Railroad, or along that of the North-
ern Pacific, you can go any time ; but men having
families will do well to go in advance and select
their future home, and make some preparations
before cutting loose from the old one.

“Which is the best way to go?”

You will find either of the great trunk rail-
roads leading westward comfortable routes, and
their rates of fare do not greatly vary.

198 . THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

“Do you think that the State will have a rapid
development ? ”

If the past is any criterion for the future, its
growth will be unparalleled. Twenty years only
have passed since it was organized as a Territory.
The population in 1850 was 5,330; in 1860 it was
172,022 ; in 1865, by the State census, 250,099.
The census of 1870 will give more than half a
million. The tide of emigration is stronger at the
present time than it ever has been before, and
the construction of the various railroads, the lib-
eral policy of the State, its munificent school-
fund, the richness of the lands, the .bundance of
pure, fresh water, the delightful climate, the situ-
ation of the State in connection with the trans-
continental line of railway, altogether will give
Minnesota rapid advancement. Of the North-
west as of a pumpkin-vine during the hot days
and warm nights of midsummer, we may say that
we can almost see it grow! Look at the increase
of wealth as represented by real and personal es-
tates :—

150 oS ee OG ART
LBOR 6, xs ee ge a LORS IDT
1860. 8s a a 88,700 408
1865. eye SL ae aerate
1868 75,795,366

From the a of the perenen Secretary of
State made to the Legislature in January, 1870,
we have the following facts : —

A FAMILIAR TALK. 199

Totaltilled acres... <¢ ©.» « «1,690,000
Value of real estate, . , : . $ 120,000,000
“ — “ personal property, . ’ . 65,000,000
Be GRY Gy BEOO i | ; ‘ 15,561,887
ire komtautoutal raductioba ‘ . 25,000,000
“© annual manufactures, . ; 11,000,000
Amount of school-fund, . ‘ : . 2,371,199

Not only is Minnesota to have a rapid develop-
ment, but Dakota as well. Civilization is advan-
cing up the Missouri. Emigrants are moving on
through Yankton and taking possession of the
rich lands of that section, and the present year
will see the more northern tide pouring into the
Red River Valley, which Professor Hind called
the Paradise of the Northwest.

“How much will it cost me to reach Minnesota,
and get started on a farm ?”

The fare from Boston to St. Paul will be from
$35 to $40. If you go into the timbered regions,
you will have lumber enough near at hand to
build your house, and it will take a great many
sturdy strokes to get rid of the oaks and pines.
If you go upon the prairies, you will have to ob-
tain lumber from a distance. The prices at Minne-
apolis are all the way from $12 to $45 per thou-
sand, according to quality. Shingles cost from
$ 3.50 to $ 4.50.

Most of the farmers begin with a very small
house, containing two or three rooms. They do
not start with much furniture. We who are ac-

200 - THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

customed to hot and cold water, bath-room, and
all the modern conveniences of houses in the
city, might think it rather hard at first to use a.
tin. wash-basin on a bench out-doors, and ladies
might find it rather awkward to go up to their
chamber on a ladder; but we can accommodate
ourselves to almost anything, especially when we
are working towards independence. Settlers start
with small houses, for a good deal of lumber is
required for fencing. A fence around forty acres
requires 1,700 rails, 550 posts, and a keg of large
nails. The farmers do not dig holes, but sharpen
the lower ends of the posts and drive them down
with a beetle. Two men by this process will fence
in forty acres in a very short time. Such fences
are for temporary use, but will stand for several
years, — till the settler has made headway enough
to replace them with others more substantial.
You will want horses and oxen. A span of good
farm horses will cost $250; a yoke of good oxen,
$125. Cows are worth from $20 to $ 50.

Carpenters, masons, and mechanics command
high prices, — from $2 to $4.50 per day. Farm
laborers can be hired for $20 to $25 per month.

“What section of the Northwest is advancing
most rapidly ?”

The southern half of Minnesota. As yet there
are no settlements in the northern counties. Draw
a line from Duluth to Fort Abercrombie, and

A FAMILIAR TALK. ~ 201

you will have almost the entire population south
of that line. A few families are living in Otter-
Tail County, north of that line, and there are a
few more in the Red River Valley.

Two years hence there will probably be many
thousand inhabitants in the northern counties ;
the fertility of the Red River lands and the
construction of two railroads cannot fail of at-
tracting settlers in that direction. There is far
more first quality of agricultural land now held
by government in the northwestern counties than
in any other section of the State. The land-office
for that region is at Alexandria in Dougias County.
The vacant land subject to pre-emption as per
share in the eleven counties composing the dis-
trict amounts to 10,359,000 acres, nearly the same
area as Massachusetts and New Hampshire to-
gether. Take a glance at the counties.

Douglas. — Four years ago it did not contain a
single inhabitant, but now it has a population
of about 5,000! The county has an area of twenty
townships, 460,000 acres, and about 250,000 are
still held by government.

Grant. — It lies west of Douglas. We passed
through it on our way to the Red River. The main
line of the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad will run
through the southwestern township this year.
There are 295,000 acres still vacant.

Oiter-Tail.— We travelled through this county
9*

202: THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

on our return from Dakota, and were serenaded by
the Germans in our camp on the bank of Rush
Lake. It contains 1,288,000 acres, of which
850,000 are held by government. This county
is abundantly supplied with timber,—pine as
well as oak, and other of the hard woods. There
are numerous lakes and ponds, and several fine
mill-sites. The soil is excellent. The lakes abound
with whitefish. In 1868 the population was 800.
Now it may be set down at 2,000.

Wilkin.— This county is on the Red River.
It was once called Andy Johnson, but now bears
the name of Wilkin. There you may take your
choice of 650,000 acres of fertile lands. You can
find timber on the streams, or you may float it
down from Otter-Tail. The St. Paul and Pacific
Railroad will be constructed through the county
during the year 1870.

Clay.— North of Wilkin on the Red River is
Clay County, containing 650,000 acres of govern-
ment land, all open to settlement. The Northern
Pacific Railroad will probably strike the Red River
somewhere in this county. The distance from
Duluth will be two hundred and twenty-five miles,
and the settler there will be as near market as the
people of central Illinois or eastern Iowa.

Polk.—The next county north contains 2,480,000
acres, unsurpassed for fertility, well watered by the
Red, the Wild Rice, Marsh, Sand Hil], and Red

A FAMILIAR TALI. 203

Lake Rivers.. The county is half as large as Mas-
sachusetts, and is as capable of sustaining a dense
population as the kingdom of Belgium or the
valley of the Ganges. The southern half will be
accommodated by the Northern Pacific Railroad.
Salt springs abound on the Wild Rice River, and
the State has reserved 23,000 acres of the saline
territory.

Pembina.—The northwestern county of the State
contains 2,263,000 acres, all held by government.

Becker.— This county lies north of Otter-Tail.
We passed through it on our way from the Red
River to the head-waters of the Buffalo. (Descrip-
tion, p. 113.) It is a region surpassingly beautiful.
The Northern Pacific Railroad will pass through
it, and there you may find 435,000 acres of roll-
ing prairie and timbered hills. Probably there
are not fifty settlers in the county. A large por-
tion of these northwestern counties are unsur-
veyed, but that will not debar you from pre-empt-
ing a homestead.

“How about the southwestern section of the
State ?” asked my visitor. :
I cannot speak from personal observation be-
yond Blue Earth County, where the Minnesota
River crooks its elbow and turns northeast ; but
from what I have learned I have reason to believe
that the lands there are just us fertile as those
already settled nearer the Mississippi, and they

204 — THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

will be made available by the railroad now under
construction from St. Paul <o Sioux City.

“Can aman with five hundred dollars make a
beginning out there with a reasonable prospect of
success ?”

Yes, provided he has good pluck, and is willing
to work hard and to wait. If he can command
one thousand dollars, he can do a great deal better
than he can with half that sum.

If you were to yo out sixty miles beyond St.
Paul to Darsel, on the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad
you would see a farm worked by seven sisters.
The oldest girl is about twenty-five, the youngest
fifteen. They lived in Ohio, but their father and
mother were invalids, and for their benefit came to
Minnesota in April, 1867, and secured a hundred
and sixty acres of land under the Homestead Law.
The neighbors turned out and helped them build a
log-house, and the girls went to work on the farm.
Last year (1869) they had forty acres under culti-
vation, and sold 900 bushels of potatoes, 500 bush-
els of corn, 200 of wheat, 250 of turnips, 200 of
beets, besides 1,100 cabbage-heads, and about two
hundred dollars’ worth of other garden products.
They hired men to split rails for fencing, and also
to plough the land; but all the other work has
been done by the girls, who are hale and hearty,
and find time to. read the weekly papers and maga-
zines. The mother of these girls made the follow-

A FAMILIAR TALK. 205

ing remark to a gentleman who visited the farm:
“The girls are not fond of the hard work they
have had to do to get the farm started, but they
are not ashamed of it. We were too poor to keep
together, and live in a town. We could not make
a living there, but here we have become comfort-
able and independent. We tried to give the girls
a good education, and they all read and write, and
find a little spare time to read books and papers.”
These plucky girls have set & good example to
young men who want to get on in the world.
Perhaps I am too enthusiastic over the future
prospects of the region between Lake Superior and
the Pacific, but having travelled through Kansas,
Nebraska, Utah, and Nevada, I have had an
opportunity to contrast the capabilities of the two
sections. Kansas has magnificent prairies, and so -
has Nebraska, but there are no sparkling ponds, no
wood-fringed lakes, no gurgling brooks abounding
with trout. The great want of those States is
water. The soil is exceedingly fertile, even in
Utah and Nevada, though white with powdered
alkali, but they are valueless for want of moisture.
In marked contrast to all this is the great domain
of the Northwest. For a few years the tide of
emigration will flow, as it is flowing now, into the
central States ; but when the lands there along the
rivers and streams are all taken up, the great river
of human life, setting towards the Pacific, will be

206 ~ THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

turned up the Missouri, the Assinniboine, and the
Saskatchawan. The climate, the resources of the
country, the capabilities for a varied industry, and
the configuration of the continent, alike indicate it.

I am not sure that Mr. Blotter accepted all this,
but he has gone to Minnesota with his wife, turn-
ing his back on a dry-goods counting-house to
obtain a home on the prairies.

NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD. 207

CHAPTER XI.
NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD.

HE statesman, the political economist, or any

man who wishes to cast the horoscope of
the future of this country, must take into con-
ideration the great lakes, and their connection
with the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Colum-
bia Rivers, and those portions of the continent
drained by these water-ways.

Communities do not grow by chance, but by
the operation of physical laws. Position, climate,
mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, arable lands, coal,
wood, iron, silver, and gold are predestinating
forces in a nation’s history, decreeing occupation,
character, power, and influence.

Lakes and nayigable streams are natural high-
ways for trade and traffic; valleys are natural
avenues; mountains are toll-gates set up by na-
tu... He who passes over them must pay down
in sweat and labor.

Humboldt discussed the question a third -* a
Ceutury ago. “ The natural highways of nation: ~
said he, “ will usually be along the great water.

~ courses.”

It impressed me deeply, as long ago as 1846,

208 _ =i. THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

when the present enormous railway system of the
continent had hardly begun to be developed.
Spreading out a map of the Western Hemisphere, I
then saw that from Cape Horn to Behring’s Strait
there was only one river-system that could be
made available to commerce on the Pacific coast.
In South America there is not a stream as large as
the Merrimac flowing into the Pacific. The waves
of the ocean break everywhere against the rocky
wall of the Andes. :

In North America the Colorado rises on the
pinnacle of the continent, but it flows through a
country upheaved by volcanic fires during the
primeval years. Its chasms and cafions are the
most stupendous on the globe. The course of the
stream is southwest to the Gulf of California, out
of the line of direction for commerce.

The only other great stream of the Pacific coast
is the Columbia, whose head-waters are in a line
with those of the Missouri, the Mississippi, the
Red River of the North, and Lake Superior.

This one feature of the physical geography of
the continent was sufficient to show me that the
most feasible route for a great continental high-
way between the Atlantic and the Pacific mu.t
be from Lake Superior to the valley of the Co-
lumbia.

In childhood I had read the travels of Lewis and
Clark over and over again, till I could almost re-

NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD. 209

peat the entire volume, and, remembering their
glowing accounts of the country, —the fertility of
the valley of the Yellowstone, the easy passage
from the Jefferson fork of the Missouri to the
Columbia, and the mildness of the winters on the
Western slope, the conviction was deepened that
the best route for a railway from the lakes to the
Pacific would be through one of the passes of the
Rocky Mountains at the head-waters of the Mis-
sour.

Doubtless, many others observant of the physi-
cal geography of the continent had arrived at the
same natural conclusion. Seven years later the
government surveys were made along several of
the parallels, that from Lake Superior to the Co-
lumbia being under the direction of Governor I. I.
Stevens. Jeff Davis was then Secretary of War,
and his report set forth the northern route as
being virtually impracticable. It was, according
to his representation, incapable of sustaining popu-
lation. A careful study of Governor Stevens’s
Report, and a comparison with the reports along
the more southern lines, showed that the Secretary
of War had deliberately falsified the statements
of Governor Stevens and his assistants. While
the surveys were being made, Mr. Edwin F. John-
son, of Middletown, Conn., the present chief engi-
neer of the Pacific Railroad, published a pamphlet

which set forth in a clear and forcible manner
N

210. THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

the natural advantages of the route by the Mis-
souri.

In 1856 the British government sent out an
exploring expedition under Captain Palliser, whose
report upon the attractions of British America,
the richness of the soil, the ease with which a
road could be constructed to the Pacific through
British territory, created great interest in Parlia-
ment.

“The accomplishment of such a scheme,” said
Mr. Roebuck, “would unite England with Van-
couver Island and with China, and they would be
enabled widely to extend the civilization of Eng-
land, and he would boldly assert that the civiliza-
tion of England was greater than that of America.”

“ Already,” said the Colonial Secretary, Lord
Lytton, better known to American readers as Bul-
wer, “in the large territory which extends west of
the Rocky Mountains, from the American frontier
and up to the skirts of the Russian dominions,
we are laying the foundations of what may become
hereafter a magnificent abode of the human race.”

There was a tone about these speeches that
stirred my blood, and I prepared a pamphlet for,
circulation entitled “The Great Commercial Prize,”
which was published in 1858. It was a plea for
the immediate construction of a railway up the
valley of the Missouri, and down the Columbia to
Puget Sound, over the natural highway, giving

NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD. 211

facts and figures in regard to its feasibility; but T
was laughed at for my pains, and set down as a
visionary by the press.

dt is gratifying to have our good dreams come
to pass. That which was a dream of mine in 246
is in process of fulfilment in 1870. The discovery
of gold in California and the building up of a
great city demanded the construction of a railroad
to San Francisco, which was chartered in 1862, and
which has been constructed with unparalleled ra-
pidity, and is of incalculable service to the nation.

The charter of the Northern Pacific was granted
in 1864, and approved by President Lincoln on the
2d of July of that year. Government granted
no subsidy of bonds, but gave ten alternate sec-
tions per mile ‘on each side of the road in the
States and twenty on each side of the line in the
Territories through which it might pass.

Though the franchise was accompanied by this
liberal land-grant, it has been found impossible to
undertake a, work of such magnitude till the pres-
ent time. Nearly every individual named as cor-
porators in the charter, with the exception of Gov-
-ernor J. G. Smith, its present President, Judge
R. D. Rice, the Vice-President, and a few others,
abandoned it under the many difficulties and dis-
couragements that beset the enterprise. The few
gentlemen who held on studied the geography of
the country, and their faith in the future of the

ore: THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

Northwest was strengthened. A year ago they were
fortunate enough:to find other men as enthusiastic
as themselves over the resources and capabilities of
the region between Lake Superior and the Pacific,
— Messrs. Jay Cooke & Co., the well-known bank-
ers of Philadelphia, whose names are indissolubly
connected with the history of the country as its
successful financial agents at a time when the
needs of the nation were greatest; Messrs. Edgar
Thompson and Thomas A. Scott, of the Pennsyl-
vania Central Railroad; Mr. G. W. Cass, of the
Pittsburg and Fort Wayne; Mr. B. P. Cheney, of
Wells, Fargo, & Co. ; Mr. William B. Ogden, of the
Chicago and Northwestern Road; Mr. Stinson, of
Chicago; and other gentlemen, most of whom are
peecttied railroad men of nee experience and far-
reaching views.

Mr. Cooke became the financial agent of the
company, and from that hour the advancement of
the enterprise may be dated. It required but a
few days to raise a subscription of $5,600,000
among the capitalists of the country to insure the
building of the road from Lake Superior to the Red
River, to which place it is now under construction.
The year 1871 will probably see it constructed to
the Missouri River, thus opening easy communi-
cation with Montana. The gentlemen who have
taken hold of the work contemplate its completion
to the Pacific in three years.

NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD. 213

The line laid down upon the accompanying map
only indicates the general direction of the road.
It is the intention of the company to find the best
route across the continent,— direct in course, with
easy grades,—and this can only be ascertained
by a thorough exploration of the valley of the
Yellowstone, the passes at the head-waters of the
Missouri, the valley of the Columbia, and the
shores and harbors of Puget Sound.

The engineers are setting their stakes from Lake
Superior to the Red River, and laborers with spade
and shovel are following them. Imagination
bounds onward over the prairies, across the moun-
tains, down the valley of the Columbia, and be-
holds the last rail laid, the last spike driven, and
a new highway completed across the continent.

I think of myself as being upon the locomotive,
for a run from the lakes to the western ocean.

Our starting-point on the lake is 600 feet above
the sea. We gain the height of land between the
lake and the Mississippi by a gentle ascent. Thir-
ty-one miles out from Duluth we find the waters
trickling westward to the Mississippi. There we
are 558 feet above Lake Superior. It is almost
a dead level, as the engineers say, from that point
to the Mississippi, which is 552 feet above the
lake at Crow Wing, or 1,152 feet above tide-water.
The distance between the lake and Crow Wing js
about a hundred miles, and the country is so level

214 ° THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

that it would be an easy matter to dig a canal and
turn the Mississippi above Crow Wing eastward
into the waters that reach the sea through the St.
Lawrence.

The Leaf Hills are 267 feet higher than the
Mississippi, and the ascent is only seven feet to
the mile, —so slight that the engineers on the
locomotive reckon it as level grade. These hills
form the divide between the Mississippi and the
Red River. Straight on, over the level valley of
- the Red River, westward to the summit of the
rolling prairies between the Red River and the
Missouri, the locomotive speeds its way. Gradu-
ally we rise till we are 2,400 feet above tide-
water, — the same elevation that is reached on
the Union Pacific 250 miles west of Omaha.

A descent of 400 feet carries us to the Missouri.
We wind up its fertile valley to the richer bot-
tom-lands of the Yellowstone, over « route so level
that at the mouth of the Big Horn we are only
2,500 feet above tide-water. The Yellowstone
flows with a swifter current above the Big Horn.
We are approaching the mountains, and must pass
the ridge of land that separates the Yellowstone
from the upper waters of the Missouri. It lies
950 miles west of Lake Superior, and the summit
is 4,500 feet above the sea. Through the entire
distance, thus far, there have been no grades great-
er than those of the Illinois Central and other

NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD, 215

prairie railroads of the West. Crossing the Mis-
souri we are at the back-bone of the continent,
depressed here like the vertebra of a hollow-
backed horse. We may glide through the Deer
Lodge Pass by a grade of fifty feet, at an altitude
of only 5,000 feet above tide-water.

Mr. Milnor Roberts, civil engineer, approached
it from the west, and this is his description of
the Pass : —

“ Considered as a railroad route, this valley is re-
markably favorable, the rise from Deer Lodge City
to the pass or divide between the waters of the
Pacific and Atlantic being quite gentle, and even
on the last few miles, the summit, about 5,000
feet above the sea, may be attained without em-
ploying a gradient exceeding fifty feet to the mile,
with a moderate cut. The whole forty miles from
Deer Lodge City to the summit of the Rocky
Mountains by this route can be built as cheaply as
roads are built through prairie countries generally.
A little more work will be required: in passing to
the east side from this side, down Divide Creek to
Wisdom or Big Hole River; but the line will be
highly favorable on an average all the way to the
Jefferson Fork of the Missouri River. This favor-
able pass comes into connection more particularly
with the Yellowstone Valley route to the main
Missouri Valley. A remarkable circumstance con-
nected with this pass will convey a very clear view

216 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

of its peculiarly favorable character. Private par-
ties engaged in gold mining, in the gold-fields which
exist abundantly on both sides of the Rocky
Mountains, have dug a ditch across this summit
which is only eighteen feet deep at the apex of the
divide, through which they carry the waters of
‘ Divide Creek,’ a tributary of the Missouri, across
to the Pacific side, where it is used in gold-
washing, and the waste water passes into the
Pacific Ocean. This has been justly termed high-
way robbery.”

There are half a dozen passes nearly as low, —
Mullan’s, Blackfoot, Lewis and Clark’s, Cadotte’s,
and the Marias.

Going through the Deer Lodge Pass, we find
that the stream changes its name very often be-
fore reaching the Pacific. The little brook on the
summit of the divide, turbid with the washings of
the gold-mines, is called the Deer Lodge Creek.
Twenty-five miles farther on it is joined by a
small stream that trickles from the summit of
Mullan’s Pass, near Helena, and the two form the
Hell Gate, just as the Pemigewasset and Winni-
pesaukee form the Merrimac in New Hampshire,
receiving its name from the many Indian fights
that have taken place in its valley, where the
Blackfeet and Nez Percés have had many a battle.
The stream bears the name of Hell Gate for about
eighty miles before being joined by the Blackfoot,

NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD. 217

which flows from the mountains in the vicinity of
Cadotte’s and Lewis and Clark’s Passes.

A little below the junction it empties into the
Bitter Root, which, after a winding course of a
hundred miles, is joined by the Flathead, that
comes down from Flathead Lake and the country
around Marias Pass. The united streams below
the junction take the name of Clark’s River, which
has a circuitous course northward, running for a
little distance into British America, then back
again through a wide plain till joined by the
Snake, and the two become the Columbia, pouring
a mighty flood westward to the ocean. The line
of the road does not follow the river to the boun-
dary between the United States and the British
Possessions, but strikes across the plain of the
Columbia.

The characteristics of Clark’s River and the
surrounding country are thus described by Mr.
Roberts : —

“ Clark’s River has a flow in low water at least
six times greater than the low-water flow of the
Ohio River between Pittsburg and Wheeling; and
while its fall is slight, considered with reference
to railroad grades, it is so considerable as to afford
a great number of water-powers, whose future
value must be very great, —an average of eleven
feet per mile.

“ Around Lake Pend d’Oreille, and for some miles
10

218 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

westward, and all along Clark’s River above the
lake as far as we traversed it, there is a mag-
nificent region of pine, cypress, hemlock, tama-
rack, and cedar timber, many of the trees of prodi-
gious size. I measured one which was thirty-four
feet in circumference, and a number that were
over twenty-seven feet, and saw hundreds, as we
passed along, that were from twenty to twenty-five
feet in circumference, and from two hundred to
two hundred and fifty feet high. A number of
valleys containing large bodies of this character of
timber enter Clark’s River from both sides, and
the soil of these valleys is very rich. Clark’s
River Valley itself is for much of the distance
confined by very high hills approaching near to
the stream in many places; but there are suffi-
cient sites for cities and farms adjacent to water-
powers of the first class, and not many years can
elapse after the opening of a railroad through this
valley till it will exhibit a combination of in-
dustries and population analogous to those which
now mark the Lehigh, the Schuylkill, the Sus-
quehanna, and the Pomroy region of the Ohio
River. Passing along its quiet scenes of to- »
day, we can see in the near future the vast
change which the enterprise of man will bring.
That which was once the work of half a century
is now the product of three or four years. Indeed,
in a single year after the route of this Northern

NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD. 219

Pacific Railroad shall have been determined, and
the work fairly begun, all this region, now so calm
and undisturbed, will be teeming with life instilled
into it by hardy pioneers from the Atlantic and
from the Pacific.

“Passing along the Flathead River for a short
distance; we entered the valley of the Jocko River.
The same general remarks concerning Clark’s
tiver Valley are applicable to the Flathead and
Bitter Root Valleys. - The climate, the valleys, the
timber, the soil, the water-powers, all are here,
awaiting only the presence of the industrious
white man to render to mankind the benefits im-
planted in them by a beneficent Creator.”

The entire distance from Lake Superior by the
Yellowstone Valley to the tide-waters of the
Pacific below the cascades of the Columbia will
be about eighteen hundred miles. It is nearly
the same distance to Seattle, on Puget Sound, by
the Snoqualmie Pass of the Cascade Range.

The Union Pacific line has had no serious ob-
struction from snow since its completion. It has
suffered no more than other roads of the country,
and its trains have arrived as regularly at Omaha
and Sacramento as the trains of the New York
Central at Buffalo or Albany. That the Northern
Pacific road will be quite as free from snow-block-
ades will be manifest by a perusal of the following
paragraphs from the report of Mr. Roberts :—

220 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

“ There is evidence enough to show that the line
of road on the general route herein described will,
in ordinary winters, be much less encumbered with
snow where it crosses the mountains than are the
passes at more southerly points, which are much
more elevated above the sea. The difference of
five or six degrees of latitude is more than com-
pensated by the reduced elevation above the sea-
level, and the climatic effect of the warm ocean-
currents from the equator, ‘already referred to,
ameliorating the seasons from the Pacific to the
Rocky Mountains. An examination of the profile
of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific lines
between Omaha, on the Missouri River, and Sacra-
mento, California, a distance of 1,775 miles, shows
that there are four main summits, — Sherman
Summit, on the Black Hills, about 550 miles
from Omaha, 8,235 feet above the sea; one on the
Rocky Mountains, at Aspen Summit, about 935
riiles fron. Omaha, 7,463 feet; one at Humboldt
Mountain, about 1,245 miles from Omaha, 6,076
feet; and another on the Sierra Nevada, only
105 miles from the western terminus at Sacra-
mento, 7,062 feet; whilst from a point west of
Cheyenne, 520 miles from Omaha, to Wasatch,
970 miles from Omaha, a continuous length of
450 miles, every portion of the graded road is
more than 6,000 feet above the sea, being about
1,000 feet on this long distance higher than the

NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD. 221

highest summit grade on the Northern Pacific
Railroad route ; whilst for the corresponding dis-
tance on the Northern Pacific line the average
elevation is under 3,000 feet, or three thousand
feet lower than the Sherman Summit on the Pa-
cific line. )

“On the Union Pacific road the profile also
shows that for 900 continuous miles, from Sidney
westward, the road has an average height of over
5,000 feet, and the lowest spot on that distance
is more than 4,000 feet above the sea, whereas on
the Northern route only about sixty miles at most
are as high as 4,000 feet, and the corresponding
distance of 900 miles, extendiug from the mouth
of the Yellowstone to the valley of Clark’s River,
is, on an average, about 3,000 feet lower than
the Union Pacific line. Allowing that 1,000 feet
of elevation causes a decrease of temperature of
three degrees, this would be a difference of nine
degrees. There is, therefore, a substantial reason
for the circumstance, now well authenticated, that
the snows on the Northern route are much less
troublesome than they are on the Union Pacific
and Central Pacific routes” (Report, p. 43).

That the Northern Pacific can be economically
worked is demonstrated by a comparison of its
grades with those of the line already constructed.
The comparison is thus presented by Mr. Rob-
erts : —

222 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

“The grades on the route across through the
State of Minnesota and Territory of Dakota to
the Missouri River will not be materially dissimilar
to those on the other finished railroads south of it,
passing from Chicago to Sioux City, Council Bluffs,
etc.; namely, undulating within the general limit
of about forty feet per mile, although it may be
deemed advisable, at a few points for short distan-
ces, to run to a maximum of one foot per hundred
or fifty-three feet per mile. There is sufficient
knowledge of this portion of the route to warrant
this assumption. And beyond the Missouri, along
the valley of the Yellowstone, to near the Bozeman
Pass, there is no known reason for assuming any
higher limits. In passing Bozeman Summit of
the Belt Range, and in going up the eastern side
of the Rocky Mountains, it may be found advisable
to adopt a somewhat higher gradient for a few
miles in overcoming those summits. This, how-
ever, can only be finally determined after careful
surveys.

The highest ground encountered between Lake
Superior and the Missouri River, at the mouth of
the Yellowstone, is only 2,300 feet above the sea;
the low summit of the Rocky Mountains is but
little over 5,000 feet, and the Bozeman Pass,
through the Belt Range, is assumed to be about 500
feet lower. The height of the country upon which
the line is traced, and upon which my estimate of

NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD. 223

cost is based, may be approximately stated thus,
beginning at Lake Superior, going westward : —

Miles. Average height

above the sea.

To Dakota Valley, . 5 Le . 1,200 feet.
Yellowstone River, ‘ 300 . ; 2,200 *
Along Yellowstone, . . 400. . 2,500 “
Flathead Valley, . : B00) ee 7-9 8,608.1
Lewis or Snake River, . 200 . . 38,000 “
Puget Sound, nay O00 sos 400 “

2,000

Compare this with the profiles of the finished
line of the Union and Central Pacific roads. Prop-
erly, the comparison should be made from Chicago,
the eastern water terminus of Lake Michigan, of
the Omaha line. There are, on that route, approxi-
mately, as follo.7s : —

Miles. Average height

above the sea.

From Chicago to Omaha, . 500 . . 1,000 feet
Near Cheyenne, . ; 500 ‘ 3,300 “
Cooper's, .« ‘ : 6 POE . 7,800 “
Promontory Point,. . 485 6,200 “
Humboldt, ; Pee ie on ||. < Seared | Rs
Reno, . ‘ ‘ ‘ eee. 4,000 “
Auburn, "7% : Ai: Boy « Saas . 4,400 “
Sacramento, . ; ; 36 ‘ 300 “
Ban Francie, (oe 7 100 be BO

Chicago to San Francisco 2,375
“On the Northern Pacific line there need be but
two principal summits, whilst on the other there
are four, the lowest of which is about a thousand

224 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

feet higher than the highest on the northern route.
If, therefore, the roads were the same length be-
tween the Pacific waters and the great lakes and
navigable rivers east of the Rocky Mountains, the
advantage would be largely in favor of the North-
ern route ; but this actual distance is three hundred
and seventy-five miles less, and the equated dis-
tance for ascents and descents in its favor will be
very considerable” (Report, p. 45).

From the explorations and surveys already made
by the engineers, it is believed that there need be
no gradient exceeding sixty feet per mile between
Lake Superior and tlie Pacific Ocean. If such be
the fact, it will enable the company to transport
freight much more cheaply than the central line
can carry it, where the grades are one hundred and
sixteen feet to the mile, over the Sierra Nevada
Range. To those who never have had time to ex-
amine the subject, the following tabular statement
in regard to the power of a thirty-ton engine on
different grades will be interesting. An engine
weighing thirty tons will draw loaded cars on dif-
ferent grades as follows : —

On elever oo 0 eee ee Care
10 feet per mile ascending . oe | Seas
20 “ 6c cc ce AO “
30 “ a“ ce if ‘ 304 “
40 ¢¢ 73 (ts it) 95 “
50 “ “¢ “ “ 5 204 “c

NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD. 225

70 feet per mile ascending . . 15 cars,

80 its “ “ “ f , 13 “

90 “ “ (a3 “ 114 ‘
100 6c “ T7 vc 10 a3
110 “c 3 “ “c 8 (
120 “ 73 its ‘“ 6 “

A full car-load is reckoned at seven tons. It
has been found in the operation of railroads that
an engine which will move one hundred and sev-
enteen tons on a grade sixty feet per mile will
move only about fifty tons on a grade of one hun-
dred and sixteen feet. A second glance at the

diagram (p. 48) shows us that the sum of ascents
and descents on the line already constructed must
be vastly greater than that now under construc-
tion; and inasmuch as it is impossible to carry a
load up or down hill without costing something,
it follows that this road can be operated more
economically than a line crossing four mountain-
ranges, and the ultimate result will be a cheapen-
ing of transportation across the continent, and a.
great development of the Asiatic trade.

Throughout the entire distance between Lake
Superior and the Pacific Ocean along the line, the
husbandman may turn the sod with his plough,
the herdsman fatten his flocks, the lumberman reap
the harvest ‘of the forests, or the miner gather
golden ore.

A Bureau of Emigration is to be established by
10* o

226 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

the company, which will be of invaluable service
to the emigrant.

Many persons in the Eastern and Middle States
are desirous of moving to the Northwest, but it is
hard to cut loose from old associations, to leave
home and friends and strike out alone upon the
prairie; they want company. The human race is
gregarious. There are not many who care to be
hermits, and most of us prefer society to solitude.

This feature of human nature is to be kept in
view, and it will be the aim of the Bureau of Emi-
gration to offer every facility to those seeking new
homes to take their friends with them.

Upon the completion of every twenty-five miles
of road, the company will be put in possession of
forty sections of land per mile. The government
will hold the even-numbered sections, and the
company those bearing the odd numbers.

The land will be surveyed, plotted, and the dis-
tinctive features of each section described. Emi-
gration offices are to be established in our own
country as well as abroad, where maps, plans, and
specifications will be found.

One great drawback to the settlement of the
prairie lands of Illinois and Iowa has been the
want of timber for the construction of houses.
Persons with limited means, having only their own
hands, found it hard to get started on a treeless
prairie. Their first work is to obtain a house. The

NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD. 227

Bureau propose to help the man who is anxious to
help himself on in the world, by putting up a port-
able house for him on the land that he may select.
The houses will be small, but they will serve till
the settler can get his farm fenced in, his ground
ploughed, and two or three crops of wheat to mar-
ket. The abundance of timber in Minnesota will
enable the company to carry out this new feature
of emigration.

It will be an easy matter for a family from
Lowell, another from Methuen, a third from Ando-
ver, a fourth from Reading, a fifth from Haverhill,
to select their land in a body and start a Massa-
chusetts colony in the Seat of Empire.

Far better this method than for each family to
go out by itself. Going as a colony they will car-
ry the moral atmosphere of their old homes with
them. They will have a school in operation the
week after their arrival. And on Sabbath morn-
ing, swelling upward on the summer air, sweeter
than the lay of lark amid the flowers, will ascend
the songs of the Sunday school established in
their new home. Looking forward with ardent
hope to prosperous years, they will still look be-
yond the earthly to the heavenly, and sing, —

‘* My heavenly home is bright and fair,
Nor pain nor death shall enter there.”

This is no fancy sketch; it is but a description

of what has been done over and over again in

228 - THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and all the Western
States. The Northern Pacific Railroad Company
want their lands settled by an industrious, thrifty,
energetic people, who prize everything that goes
to make up the highest grade of civilization, and
they are ready to render such help as no colonies
have yet had.

The land will be sold to actual settlers at low
rates, and on liberal terms of payment. The
portable houses will be sold at cost, transported
on the cars, and set up for the colonists if they
desire it. |

The Bureau will be put in operation as soon as
it can be systematically organized, and I doubt not
that thousands will avail themselves of its advan-
tages to establish their future homes near a rail-
road which will give the shortest line across the
continent, marked by low gradients, running
through the lowest passes of the Rocky Moun-
tains, through a country capable of cultivation all
the way from the lakes to the Pacific.

Am I dreaming ?

Across this belt of land between Lake Superior
_ and the Pacific lies the world’s great future high-
way. The physical features of this portion of the
continent are favorable for the development of
every element of a high civilization.

Take one more look at the map, and observe the
situation of the St. Lawrence and the lakes, fur-

NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD. 229

nishing water-carriage for freight half-way from
ocean to ocean,— the prairies extending to the
base of the Rocky Mountains, — the one summit
to be crossed, —the bays, inlets, and harbors of
the Pacific shore laved by ocean currents and
warmed by winds wafted from the equator to the
Arctic Sea. Observe also the shortest lines of
latitude.

The geographical position is in the main axial
line of the world’s grand commercial movement.
San Francisco and Puget Sound are the two west-
ern gateways of the continent. Rapid as has
been the advancement of civilization around the
Golden Gate, magnificent as its future may be, yet
equally grand and majestic will be the northern
portal of the great Republic. Not only will it be
on the shortest possible route between England
and Asia, but it will be in the direct line between
England and the Asiatic dominions of Russia.

While we are building our railroads westward
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the Emperor of
Russia is extending his from the Ural Mountains
eastward, down the valley of the Amoor, to
open communication with China and Japan. The
shortest route of travel round the world a few
years hence will lie through the northern section.
of this continent and through Siberia. The
Himalaya Range of mountains and the deserts of
Central Asia will be impassible barriers to rail-

230 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

-

reaas between India and China, or Central Europe
and the East; but the valley of the Amoor is fer-
tile, and there is no fairer section of the Czar’s do-
minions than Siberia. From Puget Sound straight

288 the Pacific will be found, a few years hence,
the shortest route around the world.

Farm-houses dot the landscape, roses climb by
_cottage-doors, bees fill the air with their humming,
bringing home to their hives the sweets gathered
from far-off prairie-flowers ; the prattle of children’s
voices floats upon the air, the verdant waste be-
comes an Eden, villages, towns, and cities spring
into existence. A great metropolis rises upon the
Pacific shore, where the winter air is laden with
the perfume of ever-blooming flowers.

The ships of all nations lie at anchor in the
land-locked bays, or shake out their sails for a
voyage to the Orient. Steamships come and go,
laden with the teas of China and Japan, the cof-
fee of Java, the spices of Sumatra. I hear the
humming of saws, the pounding of hammers, the
flying of shuttles, the click and clatter of ma-
chinery. By every mill-stream springs up a town.
The slopes are golden with ripening grain. The
forest, the field, the mine, the river, alike yield
their abundance to the ever-growing multitude.

Such is the outlook towards the future. Will
the intellectual and moral development keep pace
with the physical growth? If those are wanting,

NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD. 231

the advancement will be towards Sodom. The fu-
ture man of the Northwest will have American,
Norse, Celtic, and Saxon blood in his veins. His
countenance, in the pure, dry, electric air, will be
as fresh as the morning. His muscles will be iron,
his nerves steel. Vigor will characterize his every
action, —for climate gives quality to the blood,
strength to the muscles, power to the brain. In-
dolence is characteristic of people living in the
tropics, and energy of those in temperate zones.

The citizen of the Northwest will be a freeman.
No shackles will bind him, nor will he wear a lock
upon his lips. To the emigrant from the Old
World the crossing of the ocean is an act of eman-
cipation ; it is like the Marseillaise, — it fires him
with new hopes and aspirations. :

‘¢ Here the free spirit of mankind at length
Throws its last fetters off, and who shall place
A limit to the giant’s unchained strength,
Or curb his swiftness in the forward race ?
For like the comet’s way through infinite space,
Stretches the long untravelled path of light
Into the depth of ages ; we may trace,
Distant, the brightening glory of its flight,
Till the receding rays are lost to human sight.”

I do not look with desponding eyes into the
future. The nations everywhere, — in Europe and
Asia, — the new and the old, are moving onward
and upward as never before, and America leads
them. Railroads, steamships, school-houses, print-
ing-presses, free platforms and pulpits, an open

232 THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.

Bible, are the propelling forces of the nineteenth
century. It remains only for the Christian men
and women of this country to give the Bible, the
Sunday and the common school to the coming mil-
lions, to insure a greatness and grandeur to Amer-
ica far surpassing anything in human history.

It will not be for America alone ; for, under the
energizing powers of this age the entire human
race is moving on towards a destiny unseen except
to the eye of faith, but unmistakably grand and
glorious.

I have been an observer of the civilization of
Europe, and have seen the kindlings of new life,
at the hands of England and the United States, in
India and China; and through the drifting haze of
the future I behold nations rising from the dark-
ness of ancient barbarism into the light of modern
civilization, and the radiant cross once reared on
Calvary throwing its peaceful beams afar, — over
ocean, valley, lake, river, and mountain, illuming
all the earth.

Situated where the great stream of human life
will pour its mightiest flood from ocean to ocean,
beneficently endowed with nature’s riches, and
illumed by such a light, there will be no portion
of all earth’s wide domain surpassing in glory and
grandeur this future Seat of Empire.

Cambridge: Printed by Welch, Bigelow, and Company.

GREAT CENTRAL ROUTE

via Niagara Falls,

MICHIGAN CENTRAL & GREAT WESTERN
RAILROADS.

From Boston and New York to Chicago, connect-
ing there with all the great Railways,
North, South, and West.

EF'our Trains Daily.

Pullman’s Palace, Hotel, Drawing-Room, and
Sleeping Cars on Express Trains.

RPREIGHT TRAINS.

Freight taken through by the “ BLUE LINE”
without breaking bulk, and in as short
time as by any other line.

PASSENGER AGENTS.
P.K.RANDALL, . . . ._ . Boston.
CHARLES E. NOBLE,. . . . NewYork.
HENRY C. WENTWORTH, ._ . Chicago.

THE FIRST DIVISION OF THE

St, Paul and Pacific Railroad Company.

LAND DEPARTMENT.

THE COMPANY NOW OFFERS FOR SALE

1,000,000 Acres of Land,

Located along their two Railroad Lines, viz.: From St. Paul, via St. Anthony,
Anoka, St. Cloud, and Sauk Rapids, to Watub; and from 8&t.
Anthony, via Minneapolis, Wayzata, Crow River,

Waverly, and Forest City, to the West-
ern Boundary of the State.

THESE LANDS COMPRISE TIMBER, MEADOW,
AND PRAIRIE LANDS,

And are all within easy distance of the Railroad, in the midst of considerable
Settlements, convenient to Churches and Schools.

Inducement to Settlers.

The cttention of persons whose limited means forbid the purchase of a
homestead in the older States, is particularly invited to these lands. ‘The
farms are sold in tracts of 40 or 80 acres and upwards, at prices ranging from
$5.00 to $10.00 per acre. Cash sales are always One Dollar per acre less
than Credit sales. In the latter case 10 years are granted if required.

Example. — 80 acres at #8 00 per acre, on long credit, — 640.00. A part
payment on the principal is always desired, but in case the means of the set-
tler are very limited, the Company allows him to pay only One Year’s Interest
down, dividing the principal in ten equal annual payments, with seven per
cent interest each year on the unpaid balance :

Int. Prin. Int. Prin.
Ist payment .. . $44.80 jth payment . . . $17.92 #64
Qi ss o « «. » 40.382 $64 8th se - «. « « 18.44 64
a ie Mera 85.84 64 9th $8 - « - 8.96 64
4th &‘ - . . . 8186 64 10th ‘6 . + » © 448 64
5th = ¢ - » « 26.28 64 llth af oe 64

6th = « » + « « 22.40 64

The purchaser has the privilege to pay up any time within the 10 years,
thereby saving the payment of interest.

The same land may be purchased for 4 560.00 cash. Any other information
will be furnished on application in person, or by letter, in English, French or

German, addressed to
LAND COMMISSIONER,
First Division St. Paul & Pacific R. R. Co,
SAINT PAUL, MINN.

LAKE SHORE AND MICHIGAN
Southern Railway.

THE GREAT SOUTH SHORE LINE BETWEEN

BUFFALO AND CHICAGO.

All trains on the New York Central Hudson River Iiailroad, and all trains
on the Erie Railway, form sure and reliable connections at Buffalo with the

GREAT LAKE SHORE LINE.

All the great railways in the Northwest and Southwest connect at Chicago,
Toledo, or Cleveland with this Line. :

Palace, Drawing-Room, Sleeping Coaches daily between New York and
Chicago, through WITHOUT CHANGE.

FAST FREIGHT LINES.

The following lines transport freight between Boston, New York, and prin-
cipal points in New England to Cleveland, Toledo, Chicago, and principal
points in the Southwest and Northwest, without break of bulk or transfer.

RED LINE, WHITE LINE,
SOUTH SHORE LINE, EMPIRE LINE,
COMMERCIAL LINE FROM BALTIMORE.

Passengers or shippers of freight will find it to their interest to call on the
Agents of these Lines.

F. E. MORSE, CHS. F. HATCH,
Gen’l Western Pass'r Ag’t, Gen’l Superintendent,
Chicago, Ill. J. Ae BURCH, Cleveland, O.

Gen’l Eastern Pass’r Ag’t,
Buffalo, N. ¥.

VERMONT CENTRAL
R. R. Line.

The GREAT Northern Line and most direct route from
BOSTON and ALL POINTS in New England to
the CANADAS, DETROIT, CHICAGO,

AND

All points West, Northwest, & Southwest.

NEW SLEEPING-CARS,

the most elegant from Boston, and SPLENDID DRAWING-
ROOM CARS run on every express train, connecting
on the Grand Trunk Railway with

Pullman’s Palace, Hotel, and Sleeping Cars;

this being the only line affording such comfort and luxury
to the passenger between the East and West.

TIME FREIGHT

National Despatch Line.

Freight taken for Chicago, St. Louis, and all points West
without breaking bulk or transfer, in as short
time as any other line.

' GH For full information relating to time contracts, Tickets, &c.,
&c., please address or call at

No. 65 Washington Street (Sears Building), Boston.

LANSING MILLIS, General Agent.

(Montreal Office, No. 30 Great St. James St.)
(New York Office, No. 9 Astor House.)

Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad,

‘Nhe line of this road is from St. Paul, the head of navigation on the Mis-
sissippi River, to the head of Lake Superior, a distance of 140 miles. It con-
nects at St. Paul with each of the kh -., .ines of railroad traversing the vast
and fertile regions of Minnesota in all directions, and converging at St. Paul:

It connects the commerce and business of the Mississippi and Minnesota
Rivers, the California Central Railroad, and the Northern Pacific Ruilroad,
with Lake Superior and the commercial system of the great lakes, and makes
the outlet or commercial track to the lakes, over which must pass the com-
merce of a region of country second to none on the American continent in
capacity for production.

The land grant made by the government of the United States and by the
State of Minnesota, in aid of the construction of this road, is the largest in
quantity and most valuable in kind ever made in aid of any railway in either
of the American States.

This grant amovnts to seventeen square miles or sections [10,880 acres] of
land for each mile of the road, and in the aggregate to One Million, Six
Hundred and Thirty-two Thousand Acres of Land.

These lands are for the most part well timbered with pine, butternut, white
oak, sugar maple, and other valuable timber, and are perhaps better adapted
to the raising of stock, winter wheat, corn, oats, and most kinds of agricul
tural products, than any equal quantity of land in the Northwest.

These lands are well watered with running streams and innumerable lakes,
and within the limits of the land belonging to the Company there is an abun-
dance of water-power for manufacturing purposes.

A glance at the map, and an intelligent comprehension of the course of
trade, and way to the markets of the Eastern cities and to Europe, for the
products of this section of the Northwest, will at once satisfy any one who
examines the question that the lands of this Company, by reason of the low
freights at which their products reach market, have a value — independent
of that which arises from their superior quality — which can hardly be over-
estimated.

Twenty cents saved in sending a bushel of wheat to market adds four dol-
lars to the yearly product of an acre of wheat land, and what is true of this
will apply to all other articles of farm produce transported to market, and
demonstrates that the value of lands depends largely on the price at which
their products can be carried to market.

THE LANDS OF THIS COMPANV ARE
NOW OFFERED TO

Immigrants and Settlers

at the most favorable rates, as to time and terms of
payment.

W. L. BANNING,
President and Land Commissioner, Saint Paul, Minnesota.

“CARLETON’S” WORKS.

OUR NAGPORE COACH.

OUR NEW WAY ROUND THE WORLD;

OR,
WHERE TO GO AND WHAT TO SEE.

By CHARLES CARLETON CoFFIN. Containing several full-pege Maps,
showing steamship lines and routes of travel, and profusely illus-
trated with more than 100 engravings, reproduced from pi:oto-
graphs and original sketches. Crown octavo. Morocco Cloth)
$3.00; Half Calf, $5.50; Library Edition, $3.50.

‘‘In Mr. Charles C. Coffin we have a traveller after the latest and best
transatlantic pattern. He has thrown himself thoroughly into the spirit of
his age and race; yet, while loyal to the backbone, and indorsing to the full
his country’s claims to present grandeur and future pre-eminence, he has a
corner in his soul for the merits of other lands, and is open to the lessons of
Old-World wisdom. Rapid as was his flight, and superficial as was his pur-
view of the multitudinous objects that daily crowded his path, his powers of
observation are, we are bound to say, keen and vigorous, and his judgments
upon men and things both shrewd and impartial. Be it the aspects of nature,

OUR NEW WAY ROUND THE WORLD.

the historical monuments, the national traits, or the social idiosyncrasies that
cone before him, we find him invariably alive to what is most beautiful or
august or original or piquant, as the case may be. He is at all times happy
in hitting off the salient features, or picking out the weak spots, in local life
and manners. ... . The history of British rule in India, and the tokens of
material and social advancement everywhere beside his path, are themes after
the American’s own heart. We have never seen a more graphic or telling
sketch of Anglo-Indian life and characteristics within anything like the com-
pass of Mr. Coffin’s flying experiences. .... Mr. Coffin’s studies of life in
China are eminently piquant and original. Nothing is too old or too new to
escape his notice... .. The wood-cuts interspersed among his pages deserve
a word of commendation. They are drawn with vigor and truth, often show-
ing touches of quaint and quiet humor. Altogether, if there is ncthing new
under the sun, Our New Way Round the World shows there may be much
novelty and freshness in the mode of telling even a thrice-told tale.” — Sat-
urday Review (London).

‘The author of this interesting and valuable tour of the globe starts from
New York, visits every city of note in Europe, sails from Marseilles to Alex-
andria, thence to Cairo, and Suez Canal, India, China, and Japan, returning
by the way of California. Through this wide field for observation and re-
search, his keen habits of characterization, and his vivid powers of descrip-
tion make him an exceedingly agreeable travelling companion. Mr. Coffin
has the very happy faculty of giving to a really thrice-told tale of travel a
freshness that carries the reader to the end of the volume with unabated
interest. His tour in the interior of the British possessions in India is full
of interest, — and his elaborate pictures of China at the present time are
valuable, showing the actual character of the people ; the tenacity of their
prejudices, which appear to resist all innovation from ‘ outside barbarians,’ is
most graphically depicted, and is worthy the attention of our politicians and
speculative philanthropists. The book on the whole is a valuable addition to
our native literature, written as it is from a distinctive American stand-point
view of foreign nations. Numerous spirited designs, illustrative <f habits
and manners, adorn the work, together with maps in abundance.”’— WM. Y,
Express.

‘6 A model record of travel, over fields comparatively unknown. It com-
bines, in a remarkable degree, skill and judgment in the selection of facts
and points, with clearness, accuracy, and proportion in their statement: a
natural ease and grace of expression, with a genial spirit, and a broad, true.
sympathy with everything human. A very large amount of instructive and
attractive matter is compressed in its pages. ‘I'he illustrations, too, are nu-
merous, and all in admirable keeping with the narrative. In these, and in
the clear, fair, readable type, the publishers have well done their part.

‘‘ We confess to a deeper, and consciously healthier interest in the perusal
than in the reading of any similar volume. Very heartily, therefore, do we
commend the book to the winter-evening family circle, sure that it will in-
struct and charm alike both young and old.” — WM. Y. Christian World.

‘‘ The book has many excellent illustrations, and is written with all the
loveliness and instructiveness for which ‘ Carleton’ became famous during
the war, as a war correspondent of the Boston Journal. The book is gossipy
and entertaining in a high degree, and will interest young and old.” — Vew
York Evening Post.

*,* For sale by all booksellers, or sent, post-paid, to any address, by
the Publishers,

FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.,
124 Tremont Street, Boston.

=n = os Zs ; Zi os Zi Cigna =

FOUR YEARS OF FIGHTING.

A volume of Personal Observation with the Army and Navy, from
the first Battle of Bull Run to the Fall of Richmond. 1 vol. 8vo.
With Steel Portrait of the Author, and numerous Illustrations.
Cloth, $3.50; Sheep, $4.50.

From Senator Yates, of Illinois.

. . . . From the accuracy with which you relate those incidents which fell
under my personal observation, I am persuaded that the whole volume forms
a very valuable addition to the historic literature of the heroic age of the
Republic. I am, sir, your obliged friend, RICWD YATES.

*,* For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of price
by the Pu’ ‘ishers,

FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO., Boston.

WS ea Roe .
MY DAYS AND NIGHTS ON THE
BATTLE-FIELD.

A Book for Boys. By “ Carteron.’? 1 vol. 16mo. Illustrated.
$1.50.

‘It is written by one of the best of the war correspondents, ‘ Carleton,’
of the Boston Journal, whose opportunities for observing all the celebrated
battles of the war were unsurpassed. The book is really a history of the first
year of the war, and describes the principal battles of that period, — Bull
Run, Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Pittsburg Landing, Columbus, New Mad-
rid, Island No. 10, and Memphis, in part of which the writer was, and all of
which he saw.” — Buffalo Express.

*,* For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of price
by the Publishers,

FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO., Boston.

Wild

Got oe ee

ae S—— ——=
FOLLOWING THE FLAG.

From August, 1861, to November, 1862, with the Army of the Poto-
mac. By “CARLETON.” lvol. 16mo. Illustrated. $1.50.

*¢¢Carleton is by all odds the best writer for boyson the war. His ‘ Days
and Nights on the Battle-Field’ made him famous among the young folks.
To read his books is equal in interest to a bivouac or a battle, and is free from
the hard couch und harder bread of the one, and the jeopardizing bullets of
the other. To be entertained and informed, we would rather peruse ‘ Fol-
lowing the Flag’ than study a dozen octavo volumes written by a world-
renowned historian.”? — Indianapolis Journal.

*,* For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of price
by the Publishers.

FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO., Boston.

WINNING HIS WAY.

BY “CARLETON.”
1vol. 16mo. Illustrated. $1.25.

CLEMENT, CLINTON Co., ILLINOIS.
Mr. CARLETON.

Dear Sir, —Is ‘* Winning His Way ” a true story ?

Ts the story published in book form?

Where does Paul live ?

Iam very much interested in the story, but my father thinks it is all fic-
tion as he calls it.

If you will answer this you will oblige a boy ten years old, who has read it
four times, and who means to read it again when I go over to Aunt Leach’s.

Paul’s ardent admirer,

JOHN W. SCOTT.
April 16, 1870.

Boston, May 7, 1870.
Joan W. Scort.

My Dear Young Friend, —Iam very much gratified to hear that you are
80 much interested in *‘ Winning His Way,” which has been published in
book form by Messrs. Fields, Osgood, & Co.

You ask if it isa true story. I will tell youabout it: I knew a brave boy
who went into the army and fought just as Paul fought, who was left on the
field for dead, and who was taken to a rebel prison, and I had him in mind all
the time [ was writing the story.

That is all true about painting the pigs, and shutting the school-house
door, and tying the hay in front of the old horse’s nose.

So you can tell your father that the things did not happen just in the or-
der they are given in the book, but that I tried to make the story true to
life. Your friend,

CARLETON.

“A story of a poor Western boy who, with true American grit in his com-
position, worked his way into a position of honorable independence, and who
was among the first to rally round the flag when the day of his country’s peril
came. There is a sound, manly tone about the book, a freedom from nam-
by-pambyism, worthy of all commendation.” — Sunday School Times.

‘*Qne of the best of stories for boys.’”? — Hartford Courant.

*,* For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of pri
* i] s post-p ipt of price
by the Publishers, 3

FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO., Boston.